My friend Danielle wrote a very open, honest post about her growing experiences through pain and suffering. Also, another friend, Audra, wrote a very similar message about finding God in the midst of pain. It’s brought to mind some things I have been meditating on while driving my little blue car for eight hours a day delivering medicine to little old ladies.
Let me just say something about life and death.
If there is ever a more difficult question for a Christian to answer, it is, how can a loving God allow so much evil and suffering in the world? Is He not really all powerful? Is He not really all-loving? If He is both, is He not contradicting Himself by allowing the world to continue spinning while it is hurting, grieving, mourning, hating, dying?
One would think that the coming of the Son of God in flesh (the birth of whom we are presently celebrating) would bring either #1 an end to all suffering and evil, or #2 an explanation as to why such suffering and evil must exist. The Jews were hoping for #1. We in the 21st century would at least settle for #2.
But instead of coming to provide answers, and usher in a kingdom of peace and prosperity all over the earth, the Son of God, the Messiah who came to save the world… DIED. And He didn’t just die, He SUFFERED greatly, and then died an excruciating death. (Remember, the word “excruciating” got it’s meaning from the greek word for “crucify,” being a sort of death that is so utterly painful, it needed it’s own word to describe the pain.)
God died!
So when I am hurting and broken and disillusioned, I may turn to God and say “where are you? Where have you been?” There He is, saying “I am on the cross, suffering right there with you!”
Ravi Zacharias tells the story about Elie Wiesel, who wrote about an experience he had in a Nazi concentration camp, in which he witnessed two men and a boy being hanged. He wrote…
“The Nazis would set up hanging gallows outside of the concentration camps and force the prisoners to watch public hangings of their family members in an effort to break their spirits and kill their faith. On one such occasion Elie (a boy at the time) was forced to witness the hangings of two men and boy.The two men died quickly, but the boy died slowly and violently. While the boy was still alive, hanging from the gallows, someone behind Elie cried aloud, "Where is God? Where is He?" Elie remembers, “And I heard a voice within me answer him: "Where is He? Here He is — He is hanging here on this gallows ... That night the soup tasted of corpses.”
For many people, they are eating and drinking death and pain, and their soup tastes of corpses. They have witnessed all of goodness come to a bitter end, where hope is drowned in a sea of vile wickedness. And they look around and say “where is God?” Then some voice shouts “look, there He is! On the cross! He, too, is dying!” Another cries “let us go, so that we may die with Him.”
Before His death, Jesus had His disciples eat one last meal with Him. The air of death was in Jesus' nostrils, Jesus wanted His disciples to recognize the immanence of it, and for them to taste it with Him, and to understand why He was about to undergo this tragedy of death that many had experienced before - though never before had it been done this way, not by the Son of God. "This is my blood" He said, passing a cup of wine around the table "which is poured out for you." And they drank. "Take, eat, this is my body" He said, this time passing a piece of bread "which is broken for you." and they ate.
We eat and drink death every day. But Jesus wanted His disciples (and us) to digest one more death, the death that would end all death. "Do this in remembrance of Me." Hours later, HE was hanging on a cross, crying as we all have cried, "My God, why have You forsaken me?" And He hung His head and gave up the ghost.
But no sooner had all hope been destroyed in the hearts of those who once longed for it, there was news… God – who died on the cross three nights ago – was seen alive in a garden… He is no longer dead!
How can this be, and what does it mean?
It means that every pain that I have ever experienced, God offers no excuses, He simply comes and shares in the pain with me, and not only that, but the pain of the whole world. And then He came back to life! He is alive again! And then He makes this incredible promise that if I will embrace Him and die to myself along with Him, He will resurrect me, too! But not back into the person I once was, but into the kind of person God made me to be! Excellent! What more wonderful response could God have had toward evil, but to let it take HIM into the grave and die, and then come back to life again, having destroyed death?!
I don’t claim to understand the full force and meaning for evil. Perhaps it is, by its very nature, meaningless. But what I know is that Jesus came to bring meaning where meaning was lost. He brought reality back to the place that has been ransacked by lies, illusions and false realities.
And when I hurt, though my heart is crying out with pain, I am compelled to look to Christ, the God who died, and to say “Christ, You have died with me, for me. If You will have me, I wish to be buried with You. For I know that You have been raised again, and I want to be raised with You.”
Be recaptured by the death and resurrection of Christ. Let it fill you, let Jesus’ pain represent your pain, and watch yourself die to the evil that has brought you where you are. Then let Christ raise you up again into new life, and make you a child of God, filled with hope of eternal glory. If you must die, die with Christ. He will raise You, because it is His business of raising men from the dead.
“Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone. But, if it die, it will bring forth much fruit.” - Jesus
"Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" - Paul, the apostle
"O death, where is your victory? O grave, where is your sting? Death is swallowed up in victory!... Thanks be to God!" - Paul, the apostle
When I cannot feel
when my wounds won't heal
Lord I humbly kneel
hidden in You
Lord, You are my life
and I don't mind to die
just as long as I
am hidden in You
If I could just sit with You a while
nothing can touch me,
though I'm wounded, though I die
If I could just sit with You a while
If You could just hold me
moment by moment
till forever passes by
No comments:
Post a Comment