Getting the Help We Desperately Need
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Henry David Thoreau was writing about the way people were enslaved by their work back in 1854. Yet his words ring true in this very different time. More and more people live to work rather than work to live. This is about organizing life around work rather than working with a meaningful quality of life in mind. It is quiet desperation because it goes largely unacknowledged. Thoreau defined the resulting resignation as “confirmed desperation.” People feel trapped, without alternatives.
Sounds very familiar.
But signaling a possible way out of the drudgery dilemma, Thoreau also said, “It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” This wisdom was the result of his living life deliberately, observing the world, drawing on his own experiences, and self-examining. That’s to say, Thoreau’s wisdom was dependent on human rationality alone.
While avoiding desperate actions is surely good, can we always depend on rationality to save us? If not, are there other, more reliable sources of wisdom to help us in our despair?
An agnostic friend, who is a scientist, told me about the time he was hiking alone on a mountainside and how, suddenly in danger, his rationality didn’t help. He’d become dehydrated and was disoriented and nauseated. In that moment of fear, he did what he would not have done in his rational mind in other, less threatening circumstances—he began to pray involuntarily. Thankfully he managed to get safely off the mountain. But in hindsight, he explained that his praying must have been an unconscious way of reducing the stress he felt. That’s to say, for him, prayer brought no spiritual help, nor was it a matter of his own wisdom prevailing; he was simply lucky enough to survive the ordeal.
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”
But another source of wisdom—ancient and biblical—teaches that times of desperation can indeed be the doorway to help that transcends the physical kind. Our desperation does not have to be silent, nor lead to harmful acts. Instead, it can lead to relief from despair through trust.
Two thousand years ago in Judea, most people struggled under the oppression of both the Roman military and the Jewish religious authorities. When Jesus spoke to His listeners, He said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). It was an invitation to all those exhausted, weighed down and oppressed by life, whose minds were now opening to God. It was also a promise of relief and rest.
How would that be achieved?
We discover that it wasn’t in removing all burdens. It was in the lightening of the load, a new way of thinking, gentleness, humility: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28–29).
“The Lord is near to the broken-hearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.”
That rest is also found in other ways that answer the prayer of the desperate: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” This is the way the early New Testament Church found relief to life’s challenges, injustices, inequities and oppression. The answers would not be the result of human rationality, but because “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7). This is a suprahuman yet available source of wisdom when we’re desperate.