A classmate of my daughter took his life this past week. He was a senor in High School, active in sports, popular, the American dream. The next day at school my daughter sent her mother a text saying, “It’s horrible here. I want to come home.”
The Centers for Disease control report that suicide is the third leading cause of death of people aged 15 to 24 and that suicide is the fourth leading cause of death for children between the ages of 10 and 14. Depression is the leading factor which causes teens to take their life, a feeling of hopelessness and feeling that suicide is the only way to solve their problems.” The National Institute of Mental Health believes that as many as 25 teen suicides are attempted for each one that is completed, and teen suicide numbers are increasing. Every 2 hours and 11 minutes, a person under the age of 25 completes suicide.The prophet Jeremiah felt this despair this hopelessness and wrote, “Yet I curse the day I was born! May no one celebrate the day of my birth. I curse the messenger who told my father, “Good news—you have a son!” Let him be destroyed like the cities of old that
the Lord overthrew without mercy. Terrify him all day long with battle shouts, because he did not kill me at birth Oh, that I had died in my mother’s womb, that her body had been my grave! Why was I ever born? My entire life has been filled with trouble, sorrow, and shame.” Jeremiah 20:14-18.
Why was I ever born? All of us have asked this question? Satan whispers his lies in our ears, “Your no good, you’re situation is hopeless, everyone would be better off without you.” Hopelessness, powerless to change things. Where did Jeremiah find the courage to continue? In his God or Lord, “But the Lord stands beside me like a great warrior. Before him my persecutors will stumble. They cannot defeat me.” Jeremiah 20:11.
I cannot begin to feel the pain of this family. Yet I find hope in the response of the school , they brought in local pastors to talk to and pray with the students. The students prayed during classes, they prayed for his family and for each other. The Lord was in the school, standing beside these students.
The school sent a letter to us, the parents of students, advising us to lend support at home and to be sensitive and aware of the reactions experience by grieving adolescents. The same advise applies to all of us, to lend support, to be sensitive to the people we love. Satan is lurking and prowling about, whispering lies to our family, our friends and to us. “Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your Christian brothers and sisters all over the world are going through the same kind of suffering you are.” 1 Peter 5:9
