Week 18: Day 4

Intro: Hello and welcome to Orbit, a short reflection to help you put God at the centre of your life from the team behind Satellites - I'm Jenny Flannagan, I manage Alumina, Youthscape’s online support program for teenagers struggling with self-harm. Each weekday we share a little bit of the Bible with you, give you a chance to pray and think about it, and provide you with one practical way to put it into practice today. This week we’re marking National Mental Health Awareness Week with some reflections that focus on this year’s theme, which is loneliness.

Bible: Today's reading comes from Lamentations 3:24-26

I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Thoughts: Do you ever talk to yourself? – like give yourself little pep talks – ‘you can do this, you are stronger than this?’ or whatever you need to hear? I work with a lot of young people who struggle with self-harm and some of them have told me how they sometimes manage to talk themselves out of bad choices in difficult moment by just talking outloud to themselves, reminding themselves of their choices, and what they want for themselves. The one time in my life that I went ski-ing, I remember struggling at first to remember to lean forwards rather than backwards when I was going downhill, and I started this weird little mantra that I would say to myself as I ski-ed. It was ‘Lean forward you pillock’.

Sometimes we don’t speak to ourselves in a kind way. We tell ourselves we’re going to fail, or we’re useless, or that no-one wants to be with us. We often take those words from things other people have said to us or how they have made us feel. And the danger is that those things become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone made us feel rejected, we tell ourselves no-one wants us, we feel lonely, unlovable, we avoid people and withdraw because of how we feel and we just keep spiralling in that loop.

The things we say to ourselves are powerful. The things we think about ourselves matter. And this passage is an amazing example of the power of choosing carefully what we say to ourselves, and where it comes from. Verse 24 says “I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for him.” The Message translation puts it a bit differently: “I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over). He’s all I’ve got left.”

The writer here is in the middle of a dark, difficult season. The book of Lamentations is a book of pain – we have already had two and a half chapters of grief and we’re going to have another two chapters after this. But the writer isn’t taking his or her outlook from their circumstances. Instead they’re making this effort to reach for something else, to reach for something that they remember, that they believe, or maybe used to believe. And it takes energy to do that when you’re at rock bottom. To reach out of the pit and hold onto something else.

I wonder if we can do that too. If, instead of just repeating back to ourselves the things everyone else is saying around us, or letting how someone else treats us define how we feel about ourselves, if we can reach for something God says, or something we know about who God is. In these verses the writer is holding on their belief that God is good to those who hope in him and who seek him. It’s all he has right now. Waiting and hoping. But it’s enough to make a difference.

Prayer: God it feels so hard sometimes to hold onto what You say and who You are in the face of all the other stuff that gets thrown at me. Would you show me something today that I can hold onto and say to myself that will help. Amen

Action: You might have predicted that I’m going to ask you to try talking to yourself today. It’s fine to do it when no-one is looking or nearby. Think of something you believe about God, maybe a verse of Scripture that gives you hope. It might even be from these verses today – The Message puts it this way, It’s a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God. And then throughout the day just speak these words to yourself – you can even whisper them – to remind you what you’re holding onto.

Outro: That's it for today's Orbit. Thanks so much for joining us - we'll be back with another reflection tomorrow.