Suicide victims battled life’s rawest contests. They often faced a mental illness or illnesses and felt the peril of mental fatigue. What you and I take for granted, they coveted. Optimism. Hope. Confidence that all will be well. Their clouds had no silver linings; their storms had no rainbows.

Didn’t we wonder, Why couldn’t he snap out of this slump . . . shrug off this case of the blues . . . buck up and move forward? Of course, had the struggle been a physical one, we wouldn’t have asked those questions. Of cancer patients we don’t ask, “Why didn’t they get rid of that melanoma?” We understand the power of cancer. We may not understand the mystery of mental illness. I certainly don’t. But this much I have observed. Depression causes good people to make the wrong choice.

Let’s be clear: suicide is the wrong choice. The date of our death is God’s to choose, not ours. He gives life, and he takes it. When people orchestrate their own death, they make the wrong choice. But is the mistake a spiritually fatal one? Do we despair of any hope of their eternal salvation? Are we left with the nightmarish conclusion that heaven holds no place for them?

By no means. For while suicide is the wrong choice, have not we all made wrong choices? And did Christ not come for people like us? Frame their lives rightly. Remember good decisions. Catalog blue-ribbon days. Jesus said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28 NKJV). God does not measure a person by one decision, nor should we.

From “Max on Life” by Max Lucado

Learn more at: http://www.thomasnelson.com/max-on-life.html

© 2010 Max Lucado

Used by permission