Hear my prayer, O Lord. Let my cry come to You! Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my distress! Incline Your ear to me. Answer me speedily in the day when I call! For my days pass like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is struck down like grass and has withered. I forget to eat bread. Because of my loud groaning, my bones cling to my flesh. I am like an owl in the wilderness, like an owl of the waste places. I lie awake. I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop. (Verses 1-7)
Alone. In pain. Pain that seemingly no one else notices or understands. Pain separates. Wraps itself around us in a bubble that drifts with the air current to some nameless, arbitrary place. Pops one day and leaves us there in the desert to figure it out. A lone bird on a rooftop. An owl alone in the waste places. No appetite. No desire to get up in the morning. Living in the fog that has become existence. Sleepless nights and pointless days. Trying to fill the hours up and move one foot in front of the other. Straining to pray. Hoping to still punctuate your despair with exclamation points. Desperation giving life enough to call out to God instead of leaving just enough hope to whisper His name. Pain.
I've known this kind of aching. Crushed in the crucible of heartache so that I can't breathe. Squeezed by circumstances into a corner, trapped in despair, almost hopeless. It hurt to breathe deeply. It hurt too much to cry. And though I was surrounded by those who loved and needed me, I could have sworn I was alone. But I wasn't. And I'm not. And the very God to Whom I cried out isn't ignorant of such need. He spoke to Job, man to man. Answered Job's probing questions as the man sat in the dust of his broken life, covered in oozing boils and demanding an answer to Why?. Why him? Why his kids? Why now? The immediate response from God wasn't the human inevitable Why not you? Instead, God first showed Job His magnificence. His prescience and omnipotence. Pain had a plan. It didn't make it less painful, but more endurable. The outcome? More abundance than Job had ever imagined. Heartbreak in his past, for sure. But centuries later, Job is with his God, the One he loved. And the blueprint Job left for dealing with pain is forever recorded for we who are owls in a desert.
But there is life after Job. Centuries of it. A plan unfolding over time that deals once and for all with the maladies of planet Earth. God Himself stepping once again onto the sphere of His heart and walking in our hopelessness and humanity. Feeling what we feel. Crying when we cry. Holding us when our hearts are broken. Breathing life into death. Commanding disease and its misery to be gone. Chasing our demons over the cliff then sitting down to eat a meal in our home. If that were all, it would be a lovely story of a man who could do great things. But that's not all we needed. Healings and exorcisms. Our hearts needed to be changed. Our minds renewed. Our lives restored. Forever. Only God can do that. So He did. When He died. Took it all on Himself. From Job backward and forward to today. All of it. The pain. The loneliness. Brokenhearted and deserted, like a bird on a rooftop, like the raven in the desert, He died. So don't go thinking you live alone in pain. Not anymore. Jesus felt it all so when you cry out, He understands and feels with you. And don't go thinking it will never end. Jesus rose again, and so will we. The other side of pain is glory, here and there. Because all things work together for the good for those who love God. The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8) If you're in pain today, the Spirit of God within you is groaning over the same things you groan over. When there aren't words for the depth of misery you feel, there aren't words for the Spirit, either. Let that sink in. In the middle of the night when you lie there aching, He aches and groans in rhythm with you. Before the throne of God Whose Spirit we possess. Not forsaken, but abiding even in our most desperate need. The One Who loved you first loves you enough to cry out over the all that makes you grieve. And He intends to bring a phoenix from the ashes. Guaranteed.
For we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4
Alone. In pain. Pain that seemingly no one else notices or understands. Pain separates. Wraps itself around us in a bubble that drifts with the air current to some nameless, arbitrary place. Pops one day and leaves us there in the desert to figure it out. A lone bird on a rooftop. An owl alone in the waste places. No appetite. No desire to get up in the morning. Living in the fog that has become existence. Sleepless nights and pointless days. Trying to fill the hours up and move one foot in front of the other. Straining to pray. Hoping to still punctuate your despair with exclamation points. Desperation giving life enough to call out to God instead of leaving just enough hope to whisper His name. Pain.
I've known this kind of aching. Crushed in the crucible of heartache so that I can't breathe. Squeezed by circumstances into a corner, trapped in despair, almost hopeless. It hurt to breathe deeply. It hurt too much to cry. And though I was surrounded by those who loved and needed me, I could have sworn I was alone. But I wasn't. And I'm not. And the very God to Whom I cried out isn't ignorant of such need. He spoke to Job, man to man. Answered Job's probing questions as the man sat in the dust of his broken life, covered in oozing boils and demanding an answer to Why?. Why him? Why his kids? Why now? The immediate response from God wasn't the human inevitable Why not you? Instead, God first showed Job His magnificence. His prescience and omnipotence. Pain had a plan. It didn't make it less painful, but more endurable. The outcome? More abundance than Job had ever imagined. Heartbreak in his past, for sure. But centuries later, Job is with his God, the One he loved. And the blueprint Job left for dealing with pain is forever recorded for we who are owls in a desert.
But there is life after Job. Centuries of it. A plan unfolding over time that deals once and for all with the maladies of planet Earth. God Himself stepping once again onto the sphere of His heart and walking in our hopelessness and humanity. Feeling what we feel. Crying when we cry. Holding us when our hearts are broken. Breathing life into death. Commanding disease and its misery to be gone. Chasing our demons over the cliff then sitting down to eat a meal in our home. If that were all, it would be a lovely story of a man who could do great things. But that's not all we needed. Healings and exorcisms. Our hearts needed to be changed. Our minds renewed. Our lives restored. Forever. Only God can do that. So He did. When He died. Took it all on Himself. From Job backward and forward to today. All of it. The pain. The loneliness. Brokenhearted and deserted, like a bird on a rooftop, like the raven in the desert, He died. So don't go thinking you live alone in pain. Not anymore. Jesus felt it all so when you cry out, He understands and feels with you. And don't go thinking it will never end. Jesus rose again, and so will we. The other side of pain is glory, here and there. Because all things work together for the good for those who love God. The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8) If you're in pain today, the Spirit of God within you is groaning over the same things you groan over. When there aren't words for the depth of misery you feel, there aren't words for the Spirit, either. Let that sink in. In the middle of the night when you lie there aching, He aches and groans in rhythm with you. Before the throne of God Whose Spirit we possess. Not forsaken, but abiding even in our most desperate need. The One Who loved you first loves you enough to cry out over the all that makes you grieve. And He intends to bring a phoenix from the ashes. Guaranteed.
For we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4
No comments:
Post a Comment