When I become overly impressed with my own importance I remember what I read recently: "If all the preachers and all the garbage collectors quit at once, which would you miss first?"

Then I try to remember what would happen if a group of women were playing bridge one afternoon, and the phone rang, and the lady of the house was told, "Have you heard the news, Paul Powell just died." When she broke the news to her bridge partners one of them would probably say, "Oh, that's a shame. He was such a nice man. I really liked him ... whose bid is it?"

Keep life in perspective. We can't take God's work too seriously, but we sure can take ourselves too seriously. None of us is indispensible. The workmen die but the work goes on.

Get Back In The Mainstream

Fourth, Elijah got back into the mainstream of life and went to work again. God allowed Elijah to sit in the dark cave of self-pity just so long. Then He told him to get up and get busy again. There was a new king of Israel and a new prophet to be anointed. The time for complaints and self-pity were over; Elijah now needed to get back to work. He needed the tonic of a new task.

With us, as with Elijah, the best way to quit feeling sorry for ourselves is to start feeling compassion for somebody else.

The great psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger was once asked by a Tucson, Arizona newspaper reporter, "Suppose you think you're heading for a nervous breakdown. What should you do?"

Most of us would have expected the great psychiatrist to say, "See a psychiatrist." But he didn't. Instead, his reply was, "Go straight to the front door, turn the knob, cross the tracks and find somebody who needs you."

Don't sit around in isolation. Don't get all wrapped up in yourself. Don't have your own pity party for too long. Get up and get back in the mainstream of life working for God and His kingdom. In helping others we help ourselves.

By these means Elijah whipped his depression and went on to the lifetime of useful service. In fact, he ultimately closed out his ministry in a blaze of glory as God swept down on him and carried him into heaven in a whirlwind and a chariot of fire. Thank God we can do the same.

Despair need not be the doxology of life. It might be the invocation. It was for me. "May those dark days make us tender enough to keep focusing on Him."