Weary of My Life

“Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more? Is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?” — Psalm 77:7-9 (KJV)

Bunyan now believed he had committed the one sin that could never be forgiven. He searched the Bible for anyone who had done what he had done. King David committed adultery and murder, but Bunyan decided David had sinned against the law, while he had sinned against the Saviour himself. Peter denied Jesus three times, which came closest, but Peter had only denied his master; Bunyan thought he had sold his. “Wherefore I thought with myself, that I came nearer to Judas, than either to David or Peter.”

He tried comparing his sin with Judas's too, looking for any difference, “though but the breadth of an hair.” He found some: Judas acted on purpose, after thinking it through, while Bunyan's thought came “in a fearful hurry, on a sudden,” against everything he was praying for. That helped for a little while, and then the fear came back.

In this chapter of his life Bunyan wrote one of the saddest sentences in the book: “And now was I both a burden and a terror to myself, nor did I ever so know, as now, what it was to be weary of my life, and yet afraid to die.” He wished he could be anybody but himself.

He read the story of Francis Spira, an Italian lawyer from the century before who had turned back from his faith and died in despair. It was, Bunyan said, like “salt, when rubbed into a fresh wound.” His body shook for days at a time. He felt such pressure in his chest that it seemed his breastbone would split.

He dreaded praying, because he thought God had shut him out. The tempter told him prayer would only make things worse. In the end he decided: “I can but die; and if it must be so, it shall once be said, that such an one died at the foot of Christ in prayer.” So he prayed, though it was very hard.

Then he did something brave and told an older Christian the whole story, including his fear that he had sinned against the Holy Spirit. The man “told me he thought so too.” Cold comfort, Bunyan says. Talking longer, he realised the man was good but did not understand this kind of struggle. So Bunyan did not give up; he went back to God.

One day he walked to a nearby town and sat down on a bench in the street, thinking about where his sin had brought him. When he finally looked up, it seemed to him that the sun was unwilling to give him light, and that the very stones in the street and the tiles on the roofs were against him, as if the whole world wanted him gone.

There are three things to take from this, and the first matters most. If you have ever felt “weary of my life, and yet afraid to die,” you are not the first, and it does not mean God has given up on you. Please tell a safe person: a parent, a pastor, a teacher, a doctor, or a crisis line where you live. Second, if the first person you tell gets it wrong, as that old man did, don't stop there. Tell someone else. Third, Bunyan later wrote that the root of all these fears was “my being misinformed of the nature of my sin.” His terror was real. His conclusion was wrong. That can be true for you too.

One thing to do this week: if you have been feeling weary of life or have had thoughts of not wanting to be here, tell one safe person this week, and if you ever feel in danger, contact a crisis line where you live right away. If that's not where you are, learn the crisis number for your country and save it in your phone, so you have it ready for yourself or a friend.