When You Feel Blue
What comes to mind when you see the color blue? The color blue conjures up images of tranquility, harmony, or relaxation, while also being associated with sad or depressed; you are in a blue mood. You’ve heard people say that they have the winter blues. Skin discoloration often also uses blue language. When someone is bruised, they are said to be black and blue. If you are in extreme cold or without oxygen for too long, you begin to turn blue.
The association of a sense of sadness or melancholy with the color blue is represented all throughout culture, past and present. In West African mysticism, mourner’s garments were died indigo blue to indicate sadness and suffering. Slaves working in Southern Plantations would sing songs of lament, songs of misery and oppression; this became the origin of “blues” music. The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer in his short poem Complaint of Mars wrote this – “With tears blue and a wounded heart.”
If you are like me, some mornings you jump out of bed and the sky is blue (tranquil, harmony), but other mornings you feel blue. You know, those mornings when you feel downcast and gloomy, and you just want to pull the covers back up over your head. And those blue feelings often lead us to host our own pity party, one in which we feel sorry for ourselves. When we are, or at least when I am, feeling blue, I too often listen to the “what if” conjectures of my blue heart, leading me deeper into despair, darker and darker, from Light blue to Carolina blue to Navy blue. It is a vortex that sucks us down and down some more.
The psalmist who penned Psalm 42 and 43 appears to be in one of those blue moods. Three times (42:5, 11; 43:5) he says this – “Why are you in despair my soul and why so restless in me?” But instead of simply listening to his blue mood, he seems to be arguing with that blueness by remembering all the good that God has done – “My whole being is depressed. That’s why I remember you from the land of Jordan and Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep called to deep at the noise of your waterfalls; all your massive waves surged over me. By day the Lord commands his faithful love; by night his song is with me – a prayer to the God of my life” (42:6-8, CEB).
In those same three verses where the psalmist cries out “Why are you in despair?,” he also says this – “Wait for God, for I will again praise him for the help (hope) of His presence, my God.” Here the psalmist announces what he actively intends to do to combat his blueness. He will wait on God and praise Him again. Elsewhere in these two psalms, we also see the psalmist’s soul panting and thirsting for God (42:1-2) and making God his citadel, his stronghold (43:2).
So, when you feel blue, do not simply listen to your troubled soul. Instead tackle your blueness head on, arguing with it, hungering for God’s presence, remembering His love, and securing yourself in His strong tower, putting all your hope in Him.
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