Feeling the Groan

2 Corinthians 5:1-5

1For we know that if our earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For indeed, in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, 3since in fact after putting it on, we will not be found naked. 4For indeed, we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. 5Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a pledge.

 In my testimony, I talked about suffering from depression. For a long time, I found myself stuck in a cycle of thought where I would feel inexplicably sad and when I could not shake the feeling right away or even after prayer, I felt like God didn’t care about my feelings at all which made me more depressed. I knew—and know—this is untrue on a logical level, but being such an emotional being makes it hard to break out of those thoughts. One thing that helped me was discovering a term I like to say was “coined” by Paul in the New Testament—groaning.

This is not simply a guttural noise of discontent. In 2 Corinthians, Paul describes how we live in earthly bodies and how we long for the perfect dwellings waiting for us in heaven. As Christians, we naturally long for eternity with God. This world can be exhausting, having been corrupted by sin. In Romans, Paul talks about how creation itself groans along with us for redemption. (Romans 8:22-23) We yearn for the end to the finite so we can get to the infinite. Even the Spirit groans! He “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). In this, we can see just one example of our empathetic God. My silly brain likes to forget about Jesus and all of His examples since He is not right in front of me (talk about things to groan about). Going back to 2 Corinthians, I am reminded I have the Spirit with me, though, and not only can He interpret my feelings of longing for heaven, He intercedes on my behalf. He longs for me as much as I long for Him (well…probably more since He and His love are perfect and I am not). Basically, it is normal to have periods of sadness in this life. It is a lie from the enemy, though, that our God does not care about this sadness.