We cannot become Christlike without being wounded. You see, even after we come to Christ, we carry encoded within us preset limits concerning how far we will go for love, and how much we are willing to suffer for redemption. When God allows us to be wounded, He exposes those human boundaries and reveals what we lack of His nature.
~ Francis Frangipane
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, The Weeping Prophet, in Lamentations 3
Oh beloved, it is true.
There is a truth that is one of the hardest for us to understand. We spent so many years thinking we were “all that,” when really, we were naught but a washout in the oceans of failure. And, in coming to be broken of our hubris, we are oh-so-cautious to bring a word against a brother or a sister.
But, the truth is, that as we go much further down the path, we do indeed become much more like G_d. And, the people further behind, are much less like Him. Oh, it is not that we will not all One Day be worthy to stand in His Presence.
We will. But some, though their glasses are full, will have much smaller glasses, than those who have had their vessels drawn out to much larger size through the exquisite, beautiful process of suffering.
Now, this fool of a writer does know a few things. And there are zillions of things that i don’t. However, one thing in which my life has been drenched is suffering. i have, at least until this day, lost four children. i have lost jobs to economies. i have lost jobs to lies and betrayal. i have lost a fairly large pile of money. i have lost friends to misunderstandings. i have lost friends to overdoses. And, the past few years have been marinated in chronic pain out here on the mission fields of Asia. Further, i have lost people to disease – some whose wounds i dressed as they suffered more deeply than i would think is fair in a universe governed by a good G_d.
There is a truth to all of this, though. It makes you real. The author who spoke of the velveteen rabbit was absolutely right. When someone loves you for a very long time, you become real, and the suffering actually is something that hurts, but you don’t mind so much.
Plus, there is another truth. One does, quite frankly, become someone who inhabits a higher plane than most people. Those people who rant on about their relatives being sick, and how they just think they are doing such a good job, that they are amazed people think anything they do is unfair – have not yet learned what life is about.
Can we see it?
Prophets like Jeremiah did. And one can only understand passages like the one above when one does. The suffering is not in opposition to the Steadfast Love, it is part of the Steadfast Love. Wounding through betrayal, is not a sign of falling out of His favor, it is a sign of His Favor and Grace and Mercy and Love falling upon me.
For therein, i am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings. I am making them manifest to a world that recoils from, and overmedicates, pain. We win battles by submitting to the pain. We overcome by flowing out in the same way that The Lamb’s Blood did flow.
So, are you going through a tough time? We all do. And some go through some pretty hellacious stuff. But, all suffering is actually a design element of The Designer of our souls. Nothing in us would grow large, or better (even than others) if this were not true. Go ahead and hurt. And sense most truly His Steadfast Love.
Tonight is your night. Time to begin to enjoy the wounds.
There will be no “knights in shining armor” in God’s kingdom; our armor will have many dings and dents. No, no perfect Hollywood heroes will ride to save the day; just wearied saints to look to God and, in weakness, find Christ’s strength. This, indeed, is the essence of God’s kingdom: divine greatness manifest in common people.
~ Francis Frangipane
