When joy seems to disappear

Kiran remarked Jesus says don’t worry “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? (Luke 12:25.)”, yet sometimes worry hits me real hard and I begin to despair and feel conquered by a sense of worthlessness and separation from God. At such times joy seems to vanish into thin air. Yet in Christ Jesus, there is an escape.
In our anxiety, we turn to material and social goods of the world to boost our sense of worth. When these goods fail us, we fall into despair. Despair is a profound feeling of isolation and abandonment. It is the extreme of loneliness.
The despairing person feels unloved by all. At the doorway of Dante’s hell are the words: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” It is not hope in God, for if they had true hope in God, they would not enter hell.
It is hope in worldly goods, hope that they can succeed in securing themselves through the possession of worldly goods.
This is the hope they are forced to abandon. Even as the apostle John warns: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father but from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever” (1 Jn 2:15-17).
“The world is passing away …” those who place all their hope in the world’s goods are doomed to experience a loss of hope.
This is a feeling of despair, an experience of living as if in hell. As we turn to Jesus and continue in the fellowship of believers, the God of Resurrection will remove the scales of worry even as intimacy with God flourishes. Worrying is indeed a waste of time.