Just Wandering About Life

I’ve been challenged, friends.  Challenged to love my suffering.

Woof.

Human suffering is one of the most questioned parts of our existence.  We watch helplessly as children starve, natural disasters wreak havoc, and human beings destroy one another.  We can’t make any sense of it.  We can’t shake the fear of the inevitable pain we will endure.  We can’t look into the face of suffering and see, at the same time, the face of love.  How can God ask us to embrace suffering?  How can God use pain for His Glory?

I’m certainly not educated enough or thoughtful enough to conquer the most popular question in all of human history, but I do have the ability to share a little bit of my own perspective.  Take it or leave it.

Firstly, I’d like to remark upon the fact that God knows a thing or two about suffering.  What He endured on the Cross has historically been marked as one of the most gruesome, torturous deaths.  According to Brant Pitre, “the Roman practice of execution by crucifixion was widely considered to be one of the cruelest and most shameful ways a person could die” (101).  Why would God choose to die in this manner?  What could He possibly hope to gain from this humiliating, dreadful demise?

While Christ died, He showed the extent of His compassion for all mankind.  It wasn’t His death on the Cross that displayed this crazy love, however. It was His suffering.  It was the physical brutality, the emotional abuse, and the pure humiliation that Christ endured.  He did this for the sake of love.  Tragedy and horror somehow produced a passionate, vivacious, unconditional love.  This makes no sense to me.  I can’t understand even the shallow end of this infinite grace and mercy.  Perhaps I will never be contented to it’s incredible mystery.  All I know is how thankful I am for it.

But what of our own suffering?  Christ’s suffering may birth a beautiful and perfect love for the wretchedness of mankind (to which we cannot fully grasp), but why must we suffer?

To this I can only reference my own experience.  Trust me, I know nothing of true suffering, so to those who do, I pray you don’t presume that I’m dramatizing my own pain.  But I will say this…pain is pain, no matter who endures it, where they encounter it, and to what extent they experience it.

I’m in a season of life where I’m required to ask for help.  To be specific, financial and spiritual help.  This may not seem like deep suffering, but to my stubborn, prideful heart, it is.  Anxiety digs it’s vicious claws into my back every day.  As I go through this terribly humbling season, it hurts.  A lot.  Why?  God’s answer for me is so simple, yet so commonly misunderstood by those who encounter a deeper, more heart-wrenching form of suffering.

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18)

Not worth comparing with  the glory that will be revealed?  Key words:  Glory and will be.  If our entire existence is meant to glorify the Creator of all things, then our pain must take an equal share in that glorifying process.  As much as we glorify Him in our joy, we must glorify Him in our pain. Easier said than done.  And this is not something we can comprehend while we endure it.  It will be revealed.  We will see God’s glory.  We will understand after fighting through the confusion, angst, and horror that this suffering produces.

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4)

What comes of suffering is something intangible, but so remarkably powerful: hope.  While we suffer, the fires of hope are being ignited.  The more we endure, the more we intensify our gaze upon the One who gives us that hope.  With Hell raging all around us, all we can do is keep our eyes upon the hope of Jesus Christ.  We look to the One who is not absent from our suffering.  He is right in the middle of it and one step ahead of us.

“Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:38)

Heavens to Betsy, that’s a rough one.  Whoever does not take up their cross… their burdens… their hardships… their brokenness… is not worthy of Him.  I ache at the thought of these words spilling from the precious, holy, unblemished mouth of my Jesus.  To be worthy of Him is to embrace my Cross…my own crucifixion…my own suffering.   This is troubling, yet there is such a hope embedded into this scripture: FOLLOW ME. Jesus, who carried His cross as both a symbol and reality of His present pain, calls us to follow Him to the place where sin dies, but HE LIVES!  Suffering is not the end.  It is not even a means to an end.  It is the way in which we know Christ.  On the road of suffering, we are discovering the character of Jesus!  This is incredible when you think about it.

Maybe this doesn’t answer the question as to why we must suffer; pain is still pain, and it’s the most realistic thing in the world to question it’s purpose.  However, I’ve come to realize that to suffer is to know Jesus in a way that we can’t know Him in times of placidity or peace.  This is the hardest, albeit most strengthening lesson we can ever learn, and I still have yet to embrace it; but what a comfort it is to know that I am never alone in the midst of it.  Jesus goes before me, enduring the onslaught of misery and heartache, and I am simply asked to follow Him. And as I follow Him, I discover Him.  I encounter Him.  I’m awakened to the Love that He has for me because of the Cross. What we endure might be unthinkable, but “is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us.”  Praise Jesus.

We spend our entire lives trying to make a home here.  We build houses, communities, and personal relationships in order to obtain this sense of belonging.  We seek comfort above all else.  We desire a refuge, a place of rest.  This is all well and good, but as a great admirer of C.S. Lewis, I cannot abandon this quote of his:

“I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

I was made for another world.  Let’s think about that.

The Creator of everything forms together a human being.  A man.  Creatively and intricately designed to breathe, eat, and sleep.  Wow.  Then He gets even more creative and makes a woman.  She was intricately designed to laugh, cry, scream, laugh some more, cry some more, scream some more, and then simultaneous laugh, cry and scream, all while cooking dinner and cleaning up messes left behind by her sloppy husbands and precious, dirty, ungrateful children.  Flawless.

So He creates this man and woman for what, exactly?  They take care of His garden.  Mmk.  They name some animals.  Cute.  They walk around naked and eat some fruits and veggies.  Gross.  But what was His intention for them on earth?  Why did He want them here, when they could have been there?  Why did he create human beings for a home in eternity, but place them in time?

I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the answers to these questions.  I am simply too small.  His Greatness cannot be measured, and yet He gives us the measurable world of time.  His Love is infinite, and yet we live in a finite existence.  His Grace is unending, and yet we only concretely know the beginning and end of creation, and nothing beyond.

After The Fall, this man and woman were “booted out” of the garden, overwhelmed by shame and guilt, and left to wander in a world of pain and suffering.  And we have been wandering ever since.  We have left the garden of our Creator to wander until our journey ends on earth and begins in eternity.  Yet, He does not leave us.  He has never left us.  His Presence becomes our home.  The very Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive in us, beckoning us to keep our eternal home in mind. He has seared into us a longing for the world we were created for, and only by remaining in Him can we even begin to cast a vision for that world.

So here we are, called as wanderers for the rest of our lives, attempting to create that which we were not meant to have until eternity:  home.  Onward we trudge, as nomads in a strange place, pitching our tents wherever the Spirit guides us.  We are constantly chasing the Presence that draws us nearer and nearer to our homeland.  Only in moments of pure, uninhibited pause can we truly receive a glimpse of home.  He grants us vision to see it.  He gifts us with a persistent longing for it.  And He calls us to stand on the promise of it.

 

About a month ago, I spoke with a friend regarding how it felt to be a college graduate who transitioned back into her hometown.  Firstly, I expressed pure disdain for the fact that my high school hang out was turned into a slot machine hub. Disgusting. Next, I shared the uncomfortable exchanges after bumping into people I used to be friends with but haven’t spoke to in years.  Awkward.  Lastly, I felt as if my entire community lived on and continued to thrive in my absence… THE NERVE.  As I searched for a word to encapsulate my emotional state, I arrived at the word “flounder”.

(Let me briefly add that transition does something to a person.  And I mean it does what slowly peeling off a whole roll of duct tape from a hairy man’s arm can do… cause intense, grueling amounts of pain.  Not that I have ever actually experience that kind of pain.  I am not a hairy man.)

But back to floundering.  I relied on this word to help me make sense of my life.  Why couldn’t I have a comfortable conversation with old friends?  Why did prayer feel useless?  Why couldn’t I muster up the courage to invest myself in anything?  Because I was floundering, of course.  Pretty soon, I was not only accepting this woeful state of flounder, but I was giving it authority.  I allowed it to step in and justify my lack of motivation, my heartache, and the continued grief of losing a college and overseas community.  Being unstable and defeated was becoming my new normal, and I hated it.

So I began to combat it.  I decided to DO something to get myself out of this floundering mess I was in.  I had to ACT.  So I started saying yes to everything.  Yoga? YES.  Weekly Bible study? YES.  Coffee dates? YES.  Soon, my week was full of activity.  “Okay,” I thought to myself. “Activity is the key.  Just keep busy.  You’ll fix it.”  Most of you can probably guess what happened next.  NOTHING.  Absolutely nothing.  My heart still ached, my anxious thoughts continued, and I couldn’t fix it.

Then something finally happened.  I was at my lowest one evening, when I distinctly heard the voice of God.  I’d like to say that as a seasoned Christian I hear His voice on the regular.  I don’t.  I’m still a silly little spacey, stubborn lamb learning the voice of her Shepherd (that was full of unintended alliteration, by the way).  But this night, I heard the still, small voice of my Jesus say: “It’s simple.  I love you.”  *insert the hysterical sobs of a highly sensitive human being who needs a constant stream of affirmation in her life*

It’s simple.  I love you.  Five words that hit me like a truck.  How could I have missed it?  The God of the universe is wild for me!  He LOVES me. Unconditionally.  Irrevocably.  Undeniably.  With GUSTO.  He pursues me.  He endures me.  He is mindful of me.  He speaks to me.  He desires to be with me.  He DIED FOR ME.

So what’s the moral of the story, Abby?  He said He loved you and suddenly everything changed?

Yes.  And let me tell you why, friends.  When you are reminded of this mad love, you are reminded of the foundation in which your life is built upon.  As a follower of Jesus, I have claimed to recognize this love my entire life; yet when the time came for me to stand firmly upon it, I stepped off.  I attempted to build something in which my own blood, sweat, and tears could be glorified.  The result? Floundering.  I guess you could call it a “flounderation” (I amuse myself far too easily with word play).

Honestly though, how many of us are quick to combat pain with our own devices?  Instead of running to the cross, falling on our faces and resting in the love of our sweet Jesus, we attempt to fill every inch of space with something that should satisfy.  But it doesn’t.  We scratch and claw at the assumption that unless we fix it, it can’t be fixed.

You’ve read a lot of words from me, so I will leave you with a few more:  In the midst of a great flounder (if you haven’t had one yet, you most certainly will), trust in the precious, enduring love of the One who is love.  Always remember that you were formed in the image of love.  Rest in it.