I know that God is loving and that God’s loving is trustworthy. I know this directly, through the experience of my life. There have been plenty of times of doubt, especially when I used to believe that trusting God’s goodness meant I would not be hurt. But having been hurt quite a bit, I know God’s goodness goes deeper than all pleasure and pain it embraces them both.
~ Gerald May, Ruthless Trust
I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of His wrath; He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me He turns His hand again and again the whole day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; He has broken my bones; He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; He has made my chains heavy; though I call and cry for help, He shuts out my prayer; He has blocked my ways with blocks of stones; He has made my paths crooked. He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding; He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces; He has made me desolate; He bent his bow and set me as a target for His arrow. He drove into my kidneys the arrows of His quiver; I have become the laughingstock of all peoples, the object of their taunts all day long. He has filled me with bitterness; He has sated me with wormwood. He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.” Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in Him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust— there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults. For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though He cause grief, He will have compassion according to the abundance of His steadfast love; for He does not afflict from His heart or grieve the children of men.
~ Jeremiah, speaking both grievous and joyous truth in Lamentations 3
The Trappist monk Thomas Keating once said, “The cross Jesus asked you to carry is yourself. It’s all the pain inflicted on you in your past and all the pain you’ve inflicted on others.” I believe that’s true. My cross suddenly”
~ Brennan Manning
Oh beloved, it is true. There are days where He allows us to go into the depths of some things. It hurts. And even the most trusting of us can wonder what the manifold wisdom of G_d is up to during the times where we are choking on the pain of our existence.
Friends hurt around us
Those near feel far away
Siblings are gone
Those precious to us betray our trust
Co-workers don’t understand
We go into days like this just gasping for breath in our spirit. For over a week, He has allowed us to have every prop in our life kicked out from underneath us.
Then He pours fuel on the fire. A song, a sense, something … anything, and it all breaks. Out comes a torrent of the pain that we thought we had processed in the past, but that had somehow become pent up again within us.
And just behind this torrent, comes the test. For behind the pain comes the afterburn of the rage we feel at the experience. It is almost like the reaction a soldier feels when someone is shooting at him in combat. Oh, it is not personal. Just plain pissed off at have a bullet go by your head.
Then He speaks. “Would you be angry with Me son?”
“i am very tempted Father!”
“Daddy it hurts!!!!”
“I AM right here son. Everything I have taken you through has brought you to this test. What will you do?”
“AAAACCHEKDAGROBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRR!”
“Yes. I AM here.”
Somehow, some way, the tiniest part of us is able to scream out to Him.
“Help me to Love. i want nothing else. i want to be just like You. i have no idea how to do this. i just know i need to know how to Love more deeply. This is the only path.” And we crumple in our spirit and soul and flesh and gasp.
“Well done child. You are growing up. I AM so proud of you.” Then comes the Hands of His comfort massaging our aching heart. We don’t know if the pain has been inflicted on us, or whether the pain was the passing of something from within us (or likely both).
But its gone.
Can we see what is there? In its place we find there is something we don’t expect. Rather than the scars that used to accumulate from the piling on of pain in our former life, there is now a greater capacity within us for what we used to fear: Fearless Love.
So, are you hurting from a test of pain that He is allowing in your life beloved? Find the thread within you that leads to the bit of Grace He is giving to call out to Him. Ask Him to help you Love – and mean it. You will pass the test in ways you never thought possible.
Tonight is your night beloved. Pass the test.
If a man is ever to enjoy communion with Christ, so as to have the blood of God running in his veins and the spirit of God throbbing in his soul, he must die to the lower life of the flesh. He must be born again. And hence the law of Calvary is the law of every Christian: unless there is a Cross there will never be the resurrection, unless there is the defeat of Calvary there will never be the victory of Easter, unless there are the nails there will never be the glorious wounds, unless there is the garment of scorn, there will never be the robes blazing like the sun, unless there is the crown of thorns there will never be the halo of light for the law laid down at the beginning of time which shall be effective until time shall be no more, is that no one shall be crowned unless he has struggled and overcome.”
~Archbishop Fulton Sheen
