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If you know me very well at all you know that I have a mental illness. I have no official diagnoses and I don't seek medical attention, I just manage my own symptoms. I am sure if I went to a doctor I would be diagnosed with Obsessive Control Disorder or OCD. I count everything. I alphabetize the spices in my spice rack. The volume control on all my electronic devices must stop on an even number or at least something that is a multiple of 5. Everything has a place and everything must be in it's place. All joking aside, mental illness is a real issue in the United States. According to Mental Health America, approximately 1 in 5 adults, over 60 million people, live with a mental illness. The most common conditions are anxiety disorders which affects, 42.5 million adults that live daily with an anxiety disorder. This is followed by major depression. 14.6 million adults in the United States have experienced conditions that significantly interfere with their daily life. 21 million people experience at least one major depressive episode per year, and women are nearly twice as likely to suffer from major depression as men.

Romans 5:12 ESV Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned!

Mental illness, like physical illness, is a consequence of the Fall. Sin has corrupted all of creation, including human minds, leading to disorders such as depression, anxiety, and psychosis. Just as legs can break and eyes might not see, it is also possible for minds not to work as they were designed to either. It is a sad reality of the world in which we live.

Roman 8: 18 ESV For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Even in the midst of mental illness, God is at work, and believers can hold onto hope. In Christ, we have the hope that the broken world we inhabit, the way things are now, is not how they will always be. Jesus is coming again to make all things new. There will be an end to our suffering. In the meantime, in the midst of our suffering, we can remember that, even our suffering is not wasted. God is using it, even if we cannot see or feel exactly how, to make us more like the Lord Jesus.

Romans 8: 35-39 ESV Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul is pretty comprehensive here! If we have genuine faith in Christ, if our sins, past, present and future, have been nailed to the cross of Christ, than nothing can separate us from God. As the old hymn rightly says, ‘our sin, not in part, but the whole’ is included, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not even mental illness! Christian theology generally emphasizes that God's grace and salvation are not dependent on a person's mental capacity to remember or profess faith, but on God's perfect love. Further, believers are instructed to care for the vulnerable. We are to care for the less fortunate whether that be because of physical or mental illness and we are to respect and care for the elderly.

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