I overheard some deeply hurting guy say it this week, that after being glued to the news for the last two weeks, after seeing bloody rage and inhumane agony that feels like we’ve somehow all lost our humanity, that he is just — out.
Sure, true, there had been decades of him being all in with God, but what’s happening in the world left him in so much disappointment and disillusionment with God — that he was walking out on the God he felt had long ago walked out on him…. on all of us.
And I wanted to crumble a bit and cry, because I get it, I feel it, and I wanted to gently touch his arm on the way out and find his eyes and whisper:
God Himself — and the ground you stand on — groans with you, even the clay beneath your feet longing to be “liberated from its bondage to decay,” and the Holy Spirt is so fluent in heartbreak, He doesn’t need words to translate all our wounds. (Rom 8:18-22).
Maybe the ultimate question to ask in suffering is: Do we want company or not? There is a God who says, “I AM — and I am God with you.”
God did more than merely make this world, He made this world to love, and He isn’t some mad scientist but He is Love Himself who is madly in love with the whole world of us, and God enters into all this world’s pain and keeps bearing all this pain, because God’s goal is to remake this world.
The God who made the wonders of the heavens, means history to be nothing less on earth as it is in heaven.
It’s true: The suffering isn’t over — but the story isn’t over.
If you wouldn’t think a book is over when there are still more pages left to turn, then why think how many painful stories of this world are over, with no surprising hope left?
If you wouldn’t walk out of a movie in the middle and announce your verdict on the whole shebang, then why walk out on God in the middle of the story of the world, when there are more than a few redemptive chapters left and the most unfathomable tragedies are already becoming undone because the Cross revolutionizes the ultimate trajectory of everything.
Don’t give up on the story just yet, because the whole story is going to be wholly redeemed in the end.
Stay in the story till the last scene: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever” (Rev. 21:4).
Wipe God out and do you wipe out all your tears? Erase God from your life and do you really erase all suffering — or erase all redemption of that suffering?
What do you get when you get rid of God? Banish God and how exactly do you banish pain?
Is it really better to say there is no God, which doesn’t solve the problem of pain, but rather just says there is no answer, no hope, no grand meaning, no other point but just to keep breathing until you no longer are anything more than buried bones under a heap of dirt? How does taking God out of the equation give us any solution?
You may not understand His ways — but, it’s always offered to you: you can take His hand on the way.
(What if taking God out of the equation isn’t actually about offering any solution to suffering — but is rather about our own desperate lunge to instate our own rule and authorization?)
Abolish God if you want — but there is no abolishing humanity’s road of suffering.
We still all have to walk through all kinds of heartbreak.
Thus: Maybe the ultimate question to ask in suffering is: Do we want company or not? There is a God who says, “I AM — and I am God with you.” The God who is willing to be with you, who wants to be with you, who is with you whether you realize it or not, who enters into whatever pit that is — and He offers Himself as the road under you, the arms holding you, the comfort around you, the courage within you, the hope that has your back, the whole way back Home.
You may not understand His ways — but, it’s always offered to you: you can take His hand on the way.
I don’t know where that hurting guy is right about now, but I know this beyond a shadow of a doubt:
Wherever tears run — God weeps… and runs to embrace us.
Wherever there is murder of innocents, made in the image of God – the rocks cry out.
Wherever there is massacre of souls, made in the image of God – the very earth haemorrhages.
Wherever there is the taking of terrified hostages, made in the image of God – the heavens roar.
Wherever there is oppression of generations, made in the image of God – the planet aches and groans for relief.
Wherever tears run — God weeps… and runs to embrace us.
God is not indifferent to our pain but He is literally in our pain with us, no different in feeling the depth of it than we feel in it.
The way that got us here will not get us out of here. The only way through is always a different way of being. It’s only the Cross that saves us all into a new way of being in the world.
As long as you are in this heartbreak, the heart of God beats in no other place.
Wherever you can’t get out of heart ache, He refuses to get out of it, because He refuses to leave you.
It’s why He came to the Cross and it’s the Cross that saves us all in the most holistic and thorough of ways:
It’s the Cross that saves us not only from ourselves and the unjust brokenness of our bleeding world, but it’s the Cross that saves us all into a new way of being in the world.
The way that got us here will not get us out of here.
The only way through is always a different way of being.
Instead of walking out on Him — what if we committed to walking in the Way Himself? He, the Way Himself, is the only one who holds open the door to a new way of being, for anyone surrendered to the way of the Cross.
Prayer isn’t the least we can do, it is the first thing we can do, it is the most we can do, and it is what we must do, because who of any of us in this busted world doesn’t need otherworldly help?
And the Cross is a sign that points us in the way of otherworldly Love, and of counter-cultural sacrifice, and subversive shalom and revolutionary prayer.
The way of world-changing, revolutionary peace is always first the work of bowed heads. Because prayer isn’t the least we can do, it is the first thing we can do, it is the most we can do, and it is what we must do, because who of any of us in this busted world doesn’t need otherworldly help?
The peace of the world is found in the cross of Christ – and the peacemakers are the ones who make the way of the Cross their way of life.
And ultimately? The more willing we are to live into mystery, the more God gives us eyes to see Him. A child does not know how dew falls, how mist rises, how fog comes and goes, yet a child knows how to trust in a world they do not understand if they relax into love, if they trust love is always coming to meet them, if they know love always catches them, love always holds them, love is always at work to undo sadness and violence and remake the world.
So this is the moment we come like traumatized, shell-shocked children, and we pray like disoriented children, for all the terrified and wailing children:
May all silence actually only be the sacred silence of our begging prayers to end the violence.
Lord, hear our cry: May all silence actually only be the sacred silence of our begging prayers to end the violence.
Lord, hear our cry: Move in healing, holy ways through the Holy Land to move the whole world toward wholeness.
Lord, hear our cry: You are… you are real, you are here, you are… so please come. You are just, bring justice; You are peace, bring peace; You are love, bring love; You are healer, so please, we beg You, bring healing; You are cruciform, Your cross-formed life bridging a way through this world, so please make us cruciform in all things, that we may be bridges toward all things right and good in this hurting world.
Lord, hear our cry: As the ground beneath us groans, so do our breaking hearts within us, groaning for You, the God who raised us out of dirt of the earth and who anointed the eyes of the blind man with mud, to touch our grimy eyes so we can all see the way to peace, that we all can be the way of peace.
Lord, hear our cry:
Wherever gunfire rains down, our prayers earnestly rise up.
Wherever streets burn with hate, our hearts fiercely kindle with the white-hot love of Christ.
Wherever there are signs of war, our lives surely choose the way of the Cross, the sign of reconciliation….
Wherever gunfire rains down, our prayers earnestly rise up.
Wherever streets burn with hate, our hearts fiercely kindle with the white-hot love of Christ.
Wherever there are signs of war, our lives surely choose the way of the Cross, the sign of reconciliation….
And the more we become like children, who lean not on knowing everything, but on being Love in everything, the more we become the mature in the faith, growing large in reconciling hope of the world.
I wish I could find that hurting guy and just embrace him gently in the ache… and together he and I and all of us could maybe live it:
Embrace your cloud of unknowing because this is the way you know more of the secret riches of God.
Embrace that this is a world of unknown mysteries, and you’ll be embraced by untold peace.
Embrace being peace in every word and moment and deed and you become part of the remaking of the world.
And when we come in to the presence of God… we are held in this world, embraced through this world… in a way that lets us hold out unbeatable hope and unassailable peace when we walk out into the world.
How to navigate a way through a hurting world?
How do actually practically find way to still…. to live out a life of interior stillness in the midst of all kinds of heartbreak and suffering —and stay centered on what is central to be steadied and strong?
What does it personally look like to form your mind, your days, your life, into the deeply meaningful, cruciform love of Jesus and let God love you in the ways He deems good and best?
What does it powerfully look like to have a new way of life, a new way of being that rests fully in the hesed lovingkind ways of God — especially now?
