Tag: Suffering

Tears in the Rain

July 15, 2016

taliyah-leigh-marsmanA little girl’s body being found in a field east of the city? That is the last thing I want to write about. Instead, let me tell stories about redemption and hope. Hell, I’d settle for penning some cheesy script full of pat answers and hallmark blessings. For the love of Jesus, just let me focus on something that can be illustrated with fairy dust and unicorns and pink ribbons. Please God, rewind this sodding mess just a bit and give us a happy ending.

I don’t want to talk about law enforcement officers wading through long prairie grass in the pouring rain. Eyes shut tight, let me forget that I live in a city that held it’s breath for a week and then exhaled this morning in a desperate choking sob.

In our hearts and souls we negotiated with hell. Jesus pray for us, for we mourned the mother but offered her up as some kind of sick sacrifice. We thought maybe her passing would placate the dark powers, but it wasn’t enough and we don’t know why.

Anger rushes in like a flood. Someone is in custody. Someone will be held responsible. We see a picture on the news, and tension slips off of our shoulders because now we have a target for our hate. The rage will keep us warm, perhaps even with enough heat to dry one or two tears. We will curse God, to his face if we can, for not putting a fence around the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil… Yes, that’s it… We will curse God and punish the murderer, whom He created with the sick ability to choose.

Denial seeps in. We are good people. This is still cowboy country, where men are supposed to tip their hats to the ladies. I know a pastor who still gives children candy, while fathers look on and smile. Except now we don’t smile. We’re in shock. Numb.

Like the cursed ground where she rested these past days, our souls are saturated with sadness. Exhausted, we lay down without answers and rise again to the sound of rain. God weeps, for we have abandoned him. “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these,” he whispers, “you did not do for me.” Who knows but that he sat there in the sopping ditch, cradling the child all week while we looked for her, and quietly left just as one broken-hearted hero drew near.

My children will not know why mommy and daddy are sad tonight. They will play with their puppy, and maybe have a Fudgsicle for dessert. Later, we will tuck them in a little tighter than normal. Our prayers with them will be the usual ones, but I will add a little something in the silence that children need not hear.

I will pray that my daughters grow old enough to have their hearts broken like this.

Living With Questions

February 27, 2016

The first time I saw a man coming undone was in High School. One of his children was in the hospital undergoing spinal taps, and I sat there with the other students, stunned into silence on our cheap hard seats as he asked us…

“Why…?”

He was my Religion teacher and he taught me more about faith in those classes than I had learned in years. He kept asking – with anger and tears – the same question each day, and he continued to receive in response about 30 blank stares from children whose faith had not yet been tested. Day after day. Class after class. Bitter silence on top of sterile quiescence.

Trying to be objective, I peel back layers of memory and wonder if I’ve ever received a life-giving answer from anyone who hasn’t first learned to live with questions. I think not.

These days, I hear many questions and very few answers. “Why is that Christian such an ass?” “What will happen next?” “When will the anxiety and depression go away?” “How will I find another job?” “What is next for my loved ones?”

“God, why…?”

I share some of the same queries and would appreciate some answers, but what’s more important is that I am a part of a community that doesn’t fear a lack of answers. Like my high school instructor, my family of Truth Seekers keep coming back, continue asking. Step after step. Snotty Kleenex after snotty Kleenex. And I love them for it.

Like a question without an answer, I penned some lyrics this week for which there is no melody. It is for some dear friends who are learning to live with questions. “It’s okay to not be strong,” I would tell them, and you. “Don’t give up,” I would say.

And then I would sit with you awhile.

Song In The Darkness

We all want to live on the mountain
Arms lifted high to our God and our King,
But You’ve said the path to that glory
Comes when we share in Your suffering.

Give me a song to sing in the darkness
Like the one Mary sang as they laid You to rest
A harmony born in the womb of this sadness
A lullaby for every heart worn and hard-pressed.

We all want to drink from the fountain
Of joy that Your resurrection can bring
But for now faith is just me waiting
In the tomb’s pain for my Easter King.

Give me a song to sing in the darkness
Like the one Mary sang as they laid you to rest
A harmony born in the womb of this sadness
A lullaby for every heart worn and hard pressed.

You’re not far off
You see my pain
You’re the God who died and rose again.
You’re not far off
You see my pain
You’re the God who died and rose again.

This is the song I sing in the darkness
Like the one Mary sang as they laid you to rest
A harmony born in the womb of great sadness
For God who loves me ever and gave me his best.

Wilderness Worship

February 13, 2016

“Let my people go,” God said, “so that they can worship me in the wilderness.” (Exodus 7:16)

Worship and wilderness. I’d like to think that there is no connection. Surely the ancient Israelites were not so spiritually thick in the head that God’s presence could be overshadowed by a little milk and honey! If the Ancient One would meet with them, no doubt it would be in the parting of the sea or when fortress walls came crumbling down, yes?

Apparently not. In his great wisdom, it turns out that the Almighty had discerned that they’d be most spiritually pliable when sand was chafing in the nether regions of their undergarments. He chose to get personal somewhere between their Deliverance and the Promised Land. In Egypt they saw his power; in Palestine they saw the fulfillment of his promises. But the magic happened in the middle.

That’s where they meet, and under that desert sun God makes it clear that He is nobody’s mascot. He describes himself to Moses, saying, “…Yahweh! The LORD! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; the entire family is affected— even children in the third and fourth generations.” (Exodus 34:6-7 NLT) He has standards and expectations, and a ridiculous amount of love.

The desert narrative is God and his people, for better or worse, getting to know each other. What kind of God is it that when you are parched and ask for water, has you stand in front of a rock and says, “There you go…”? When you run out of food, what kind of God says, “Wait until morning, and then scrape up whatever you can find on the ground…”? This is a God who has offered Himself, and sees how easily we get sidetracked by secondary appetites.

Desert experiences aren’t forever, but going on to live a supernatural existence requires a holy communion that I haven’t seen taught anywhere else. God did not keep Daniel from the lion’s den, or Shadrach and his friends from the flames, or Mary from an unplanned pregnancy. Unexpected Company is unveiled in uncomfortable circumstance.

The Apostle Paul penned his heart’s desire this way: “…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings…” (Philippians 3:10 NASB). He wanted to know Jesus, experientially, and understood that this would include both resurrection power and profound suffering.

In many of our churches we give indifferent assent to this, but only provide a voice for stories told from the perspective of victory and resolution. Suffering and brokenness and desert experiences are whispered about in private conversations and prayer chains. In many respects this is understandable. However, I suggest that there is a corporate disconnect when we preach the cross of Jesus but only celebrate the manifestation of his resurrection.

There is a beauty to be found in water from the rock and manna from heaven. More than that, a sense of wonder needs to be rediscovered when, for the first time, we see the Holy of Holies being crafted in a person’s soul. Indeed, one of the lessons of the great exodus is that the purpose of the desert is not to experience the faithful provision of God, but to create a space among his people for His glory.

For many of us, this goes being the realm of theory. Things haven’t turned out they way we thought they might. We assumed the light of God’s goodness would continue to shine ever brighter, and now we find ourselves in the desert, or the lion’s den, or the flames, or the tomb, or a place of anxiety, stress and depression that makes a mockery of metaphor.

It’s called Holy Ground. Let’s worship Him here.

Go on down to the silent place,
You who dare to seek God’s face.
For it may be you’ll find down there
An answer for that load you bear.

Stop not at the convenient spot
You’ve been before, for God is not
A landmark on a religious map,
Or a brew poured from some preacher’s tap.

Continue on with your open sores
To solitary haunted shores
Where human voices utter not
One breath of what a true God aught
To do or say or even be,
Silent before His blood-stained tree.

Sit awhile in the cold dark tomb-
That barren place that became the womb
Of every hope we ever had,
And the death of all that makes men mad,
For that is where our God is found.
Your weary heart is holy ground.