It's funny how life works sometimes. You go through periods of time where you think it very likely that you will be swallowed up by pain and sorrow and suffering. You feel alone in the most profound sense possible. Not lonely, exactly, just alone. Separate from everyone and everything else in the world. And then, suddenly, your world starts to become more populated. It seems appropriate to reach out to certain people. They may or may not be able to help you, but you do it anyway because it seems like they should know what's going on with you. They reach back. Others show up who are having similar struggles, and you realize the experience is less isolated and isolating than you thought. Some of them are having an even harder time than you, and you realize that somewhere along the way you must have started to heal because you actually find yourself reaching out to them. Miraculously, the words you used to express your anguish not so very long ago are now employed to bring comfort, encouragement, hope, and solidarity. You're still a bit tender, but it no longer feels like your arms locked across your chest are the only things holding you together. Sometimes your arms are locked around someone else, holding them together. How is it possible that such a shift could have happened?
I say it's life that's funny, but probably it's more like God. When I look objectively, it does seem like him. Taking something that seems like it would only be bad, should only be awful, and twisting and shaping and pounding it into something both beautiful and useful. Recently, I've been more than content to chalk everything up to life, nature, the passage of time, anything but God. It has been painful even to think of him, not to mention credit him for anything good. He has gotten swept up with the ways people talk about him. The ways we use him to justify our thoughts, opinions, and desires. The ways we develop systems based on “his truth” to insulate us from the confusion of a world that is not as black and white as we'd hoped. The ways we twist his words to baptize our fears into vilifying others while excusing ourselves. Somehow, I managed to forget that he is the one who showed us the value of empathy and vulnerability by becoming one of us, entering fully into our suffering and pain and deep shame. He is the one who sacrificed every privilege that was his right and his due to take on the punishment for our destructively selfish choices. He is the one who could not be held by death and judgment and so broke their hold on us. He is the one who makes all things new. He is the beautiful one, the one who redeems.
It shouldn't be surprising, then, that he could redeem my suffering once again. That he could break the bonds of sin—selfishness, pride, arrogance, despair, and stubbornness—that have compounded my pain and brought me more shame. I'm still struggling. There are still many battles to be fought, and I am not yet fully recovered. I still doubt, and I still look with longing at the places of false refuge I have forged for myself. But once again he has pierced through my armor, and I have no doubt he will win my heart again. Who could hold out long against such gentle, kind, inexorable pursuit? Who could resist such a loving and faithful friend?
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