(This is a new weekly series to help those who often battle confusion, frustration and desperation that a Monday can bring.)

I didn’t want to get out of bed.

It’s November 11th, a free Monday that I had scheduled for outdoor fall work: rake leaves, light a massive burn pile and throw sticks to the dog while hoping to listen to the Momma’s and the Pappas’ California Dreaming, “All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray.” But then I looked out the back slider door and it’s snowing. A white cascade of early winter flurries is covering over a newly fallen layer of leaves left from the previous blustery week of rain and wind.

As I lay in my bed, my mood quickly darkens from autumn anticipation to cold early winter frustration. There go my outdoor plans, and here come the beginnings of another season of indoor hibernation. I can’t seem to fight off the lethargy of seasonal sadness that is already setting in. Didn’t summer just end? I want to scream but I have no energy, I want to begin a new week afresh, but the Monday blues have already taken hold. Ho, hum, raking leaves is now a faded memory of an already forgotten past.

The Momma’s and the Pappas have a song for this too called Monday, Monday…

“Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day
Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way
Oh, Monday mornin’ you gave me no warnin’ of what was to be.”

Never a truer description of how Mondays make a person feel than that phrase, “can’t trust that day.” I am sure there are a lot of people out there that find Monday to be the one day of the week that you hold your breath and hope simply to hang on until Tuesday arrives. For people with a melancholy temperament, the one who feels high highs and low lows, Monday can hit you like a freight train. And even for those of us who have a relatively stable outlook on life, Monday can sideswipe your good attitude in a blink of an eye as it did for me on this singular morning.

It got me thinking: Wouldn’t it be good to preemptively strike Monday’s capriciousness? Instead of hanging on by a thread, how about attacking the sudden onslaught of frustration and confusion with a positive frame of mind. Like a heavy sledgehammer on an awful ice sculpture, I want to write something that will smash the frost of Monday’s doubts away. 

So I am going to start a weekly series called: Doubting Mondays. Food for thought to start the week aright. And today I want to go bold…

Understanding Apocalyptic Heroics

How does God work? Does he glibly help those who help themselves? Does he smirk and shrug his massive shoulders while we struggle and stumble through the irritations and difficulties of life? Does he ignore our plight because his Monday is filled with serious business?

When I was a kid, Mondays were when my dad put on his dark blue blazer, and his London Fog trenchcoat and he grabbed his big brown suitcase to travel to some other state because the weekend was over and it was time to go to work. Serious work. The adult workweek couldn’t wait, get busy, make your scheduled appointments, go to long mundane meetings, talk about budgets and sales goals and expense reports, and most of all, do your job. Your hard job. The weekend was over and Friday was a long five days away. So no hamburgers or pizza for now, no fun, and that meant five days of vegetable soup and tuna fish casserole. Ugh.

So like my dad, is that how God treats Mondays? Does the Lord in heaven look like Henry Kissinger with a long face and gravely boring voice? If so, no wonder Monday around the world stinks.

But then I read scripture, and I am shocked at his surprise. Adult minded drudgery is not how God normally intervenes in our world. He comes when we least expect it, he rescues when we are at our lowest. He, as Fleming Rutledge says, “descends from his sphere of transcendent power to deliver his people from their servitude and restore them a new life…it is the coming triumph of God independent of anything human beings can do ‘either good or bad’ (Romans 9:11)” He loves to play the hero.

This is known as ‘apocalyptic theology” where God dramatically rescues when all hope seems lost. 

I know what you are thinking, how can apocalyptic theology, the cataclysmic end of the world events, have anything to do with my normal, mundane, everyday life? It is the principle of how he works that matters…In the same way, he enters at the end when no one expects him to, he also will enter in the middle of our mundane every day the same way. He never changes his saving tactics. 

Or an easy way to think about it, he loves to deliver us out of darkness. And Monday for most of us is the darkest day of all.

Fleming Rutledge continues, “Apocalyptic is a way of seeing. It is a way of discerning God’s invading power now, in human events, as signs of what is to come…it offers a pattern for God’s intervention.”

I don’t know about you, but I daily need God’s intervention. Especially on Monday to break through the thick chains of my melancholy. I get depressed really easy, I can often see my day as a failure even before it begins. One tiny snowflake can ruin my whole day. And if I was left to myself, struggling and stumbling through life without help from on high is cause to stay in bed.

But apocalyptic teaching has the idea that God wants to break into my day at any time. And that must also mean he is constantly monitoring me and watching. My day is his business. He doesn’t travel out of town on Mondays in his blue blazer and trenchcoat like my dad did, he has set up shop in my heart. 

The comforter is always on call. And he can break-in at any moment.

So if you are like me and Monday has you “hanging around, with nothing to do but frown”, look up and change your perspective. Fleming Rutledge gives great advice for us with that comes from seeing through apocalyptic lenses, “In our era, it has become essential for Christians to appropriate an apocalyptic scenario that takes full account of Satan’s realm, Christ’s invasion of it, and the calling of God’s people to resist in his name. A sense of the principalities and powers is necessary for discerning what the Enemy is up to.”

So, first of all, when the sudden sadness of darkness invades your heart, resist in his name. Don’t allow yourself to fall into the pit that Satan loves to chain you in: despair and depression. If he can get you tied down in the dark world of your own bad thoughts he wins. He steals your joy. And a joyless soul is no good for God. So resist the temptation for depression.

Secondly, allow the mind of Christ in. Let him invade your thoughts. That is why meditation on scripture matters, it is intended to drive the ‘dark of doubt away.” A small nugget of truth like “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5) can work wonders in your soul.

Third, see what treasures lie hidden beneath the surface of doubt. As I tromped out into the snow to shovel my drive for the first time this year, I had on a frown. A long-faced fellow was I. So I trudged, heavy foot after heavy foot, to clear my drive while I grumbled. My dog was with me, but he isn’t as smart as his woeful master. He doesn’t grumble, he doesn’t trudge; oh no, he frolics and plays in the snow. And one thing he loves is when I throw a shovel full of the white stuff for him to chase.

Well, today that white stuff was mixed with golden brown leaves, a flurry of excitement, and he couldn’t believe it. It made him even more happy to jump up and try to grab the swirling wonder of orange fun. Swirling wonder. He loved it! He loved it because he saw in it another chance to enjoy life, not to pout about plans that were ruined.

I don’t know about you, but I get down so easy. Mondays trigger my dark outlook. I should be more like my dog because beneath the surface Jesus is still at work. And he loves to break through to offer me a swirling wonder of fun. 

The Mommas and the Pappas have one more song you probably have never heard of I’m So Glad to Be Unhappy,

“Fools rush in, so here I am
Awfully glad to be unhappy
I can’t win but here I am
More than glad to be unhappy”

Maybe they understand something all of us need to get. It is always easy to be unhappy, but those with courage see the bright side of things can live on a different level, a higher level. At least my dog does and he doesn’t even know Jesus.