A good friend of mine has endured a hellish six months. What began with a health crisis continued to snowball with a month by month list of personal grief and painful surprises. News of her most recent blow reached me while I was wrestling with a sermon on pain and suffering in the life of faith. She was on the road, so we visited by cell phone before I returned to my desk.
With that backdrop of grief freshly brought to mind, I couldn't move beyond one idea in 1 Peter 4:13. We've just been encouraged not to complain when trials erupt in our lives. We must not behave as though something alien or unnatural has interrupted our lives. Then Peter adds, "But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed." I have worked through that text many times before, but this time, the ground deep inside my heart began to shift painfully, like seismic plates along a fault line.
"I can understand suffering for a cause," I complained to my Father, "But this is too much. This kind of affliction goes too far! Lord, it almost makes the God of amazing grace appear to be cruel and insensitive!" Face it, you can't be much more critical here in 2010 than to say someone is insensitive! But that's what I was thinking. I can easily relate to Christ when the world rejects me and people abuse me, as long as the Author of Life is working on my behalf. It's me and God against the world. It's okay!
But I wondered what in the world I might learn about Jesus when it seems that God has turned his back on me. How can I possibly relate to Christ in the face of divine rejection? I had barely put those words into a sentence when this image came creeping into my mind. It was a vision of a man dying on a cross, wracked with pain and absorbing all the scorn some cruel bystanders could heap upon him. I could see his cracked, parched lips moving slowly, finally uttering those familiar words, "My God! My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from my deliverance?"
Insight came slowly. But the light finally came on.
I don't believe God ever turned his back on his dying Son. I happen to believe that Christ was reciting Psalm 22, lyrics beloved by the Jews in times of profound distress. But Christ prayed that psalm because that's surely how it felt. His life was painfully slipping away and the world was blanketed in ominous darkness. Heaven was silent. But praying a psalm when it feels like God isn't watching is a simple way of confirming, "Of course my Father is nearby!" Otherwise, why not simply cry out with a curse? Why not denounce all those insufficient ideas you ever believed and wait for death? Why use God's Word unless you still believe it works? A psalm is one way to identify with God even when you can't explain him.
I realized that is what we learn about Christ when life feels intentionally brutal. And that's what we can learn about ourselves. My convictions about God have grown so deep and my experience with him is so fully realized that even when it feels he has turned his back, I know in my heart he is still standing close by. I believe my life is never beyond his gentle touch and his powerful love, no matter how it may feel at one moment or another. And that's not just what I believe; it's what I have experienced in my life.
So I took some time and prayed for my friend in her unfolding grief. To us it all seems like too much sorrow piled high, as hard and black as a mound of coal. But that's just how it appears for the moment. History confirms our Eternal God can turn it all to diamonds.
Selah.
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