“Lord, catch me off guard today. Surprise me with some moment of beauty or pain so that at least for the moment, I may be startled into seeing that you are here in all your splendor, always and everywhere, barely hidden, beneath, beyond, within this life I breathe.”
Frederick Buechner
Be warned. This may contain what some consider to be negativity and too much information, but I want to be transparently honest. I struggle with pain. I hate it. It wears me down. Some nights are worse than others, but the other night was a doozy and left me crying in exasperation. To top it off, when I did manage to sleep, I had a nightmare.
In the dream, someone close to me went to the authorities and accused me of a horrendous crime I would never commit. The police came and arrested me, and I was dragged into court. I was innocent! In fact, I am a fierce defender of the safety of the ones I was accused of hurting! I have sacrificed years of my life for them! I passionately defended myself. But no one would listen in this crazy kangaroo court.
In the dream, I felt anger and rage that anything so ridiculous could happen. Strangely, the awareness of real-life pain wove in and out of my sleep and it felt like the dream cops were the cause of the electric shock-type pains that travel through my body and the severe muscle spasms I get in my legs. I couldn’t stand. I was so angry I tried to bite the officers restraining me.
When I woke, I was still angry. I knew I was innocent! I wanted to give those people in my dream the same treatment they had given me. I’d shoot them all with tazers! I’d twist their joints with ropes! I’d jab their guts with a bowie knife! It took a while to calm down and convince myself it was just a dream.
My body still hurt though. I was grumpy all day. I’m a little slow sometimes, and not just due to coping with pain and lack of sleep. Sometimes I just don’t get it.
Two of the words I’ve been thinking about for Creative Meditations for Lent this week are passion and innocent. In the dream I knew I was innocent. In the dream I fought passionately against the injustice of the whole thing. It didn’t dawn on me until I was looking at photos I took of a place called “Ecce Homo” in Jerusalem, that there could be a message in the dream. I have prayed Philippians 3:10 many times. “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection [and the part I’m not as fond of but include because it’s a part of the whole picture] and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…”.
Jesus was innocent. Jesus was not emotionless. He was tempted in every way we are. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) God created us to naturally want to protect our bodies and souls from harm. If he was also human, how could Jesus control a passionate drive to defend himself from the false accusation from a disciple he loved? Did Jesus feel the powerful urge to strike back at those striking him? How could he love these people? How could he say, “Father, forgive them…?”
Jesus was fully God and fully man, but he emptied himself to live as a human, subject to the limitations of humans. [Christ Jesus] “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8) It was his connection with the Father and Holy Spirit that demonstrated what it is to be fully human living in right relationship with God the Father and empowered by the Holy Spirit. He came to reconnect us to the Father. He left the earth so the Holy Spirit could come and fill us, comfort us, and renew us.
The worn stone pavement thought to be the location of the old Roman garrison under an ancient building in Jerusalem is called Ecce Homo – “Behold the Man.” These were Pilate’s words as he handed Jesus over to the soldiers who were no doubt demonically inspired to do their worst to him there.
The song, “Behold the Man” comes to mind today.
Like a lamb to the slaughter
They led Him away
He was battered, bruised, and beaten
For the sheep who’d gone astray…
Through the scourging and the beatings
He never said a thing…
Behold the Man
Really look at Him
And then you’ll understand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIKrUPk4keo
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus tis now.
How enriched are they who find their strength in the Lord;
within their hearts are the highways of holiness!
Even when their paths wind through the dark valley of tears,
they dig deep to find a pleasant pool where others find only pain.
He gives to them a brook of blessing
filled from the rain of an outpouring.
They grow stronger and stronger with every step forward,
and the God of all gods will appear before them in Zion.
Psalm 84:5-7 TPT
Valley experiences are common to all of us who draw breath in this world. Some valleys are deeper than others. I’ve watched people who impress me walk through tough times as if they have a secret resource that allows them to remain at peace in spite of everything. When I ask them how they do it they tell me, “It’s in the dark places and stressful times that God’s grace is most plentiful. It’s not as easy as it was before. You have to dig. But that’s where profound silence invites you to come closer. That’s when you can feel his heart of love for you.”
On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
I cling to you;
your right hand upholds me.
Psalm 63:6-7 NIV
I don’t know why pain, worry, and loneliness seem worse at night, but many people tell me this is when they too feel most vulnerable. Perhaps the absence of busy-ness and entertainment leave us with fewer ways to avoid what sometimes lies behind the façade of having it all together.
I have found the best way back to confidant security is to admit my need and to remember that all the Father’s love is poured out on his son Jesus Christ. Since, as a believer, I am in Christ and he is in me, I am also a recipient of all that love. Do you have any idea how much love that is?
The Lover of our souls never sleeps, is never distracted, and never rejects those are his. In the midst of any circumstance we are never alone.
Rest. He’s got this.
Sharing the sufferings of Christ involves the experience of the deep emotions, agony, and passion he continues to experience for the least, the last, and the lost by his indwelling Spirit. All followers of Jesus were once least, last, and lost. When we forget that, we stop feeling.
– Dr. Mark Chironna
Another painted prayer from last weekend. As I met with friends who also feel an urge to pray for our city, our valley and for our country, I kept hearing the phrase, Even the nights are better.
We talked about our experiences. Most of us are familiar with night seasons. Some in our group wake during the night hearing a call to pray for someone or something that burdens their hearts. For others, struggles with pain of all sorts seem more intense at night; loneliness, loss, and physical pain arise in the darkness. Circumstances that confront us with the unknown can take us to a place where the façade of being in control impresses no one. But everyone agreed, the night season has its beauty.
In that quietness, in that place void of daytime distractions, we can learn to enter another type of rest — that is, when we stop protesting long enough to hear to the still small voice that whispers comfort.
While the band played and the people sang, I picked up my brush and quickly painted the picture in my mind. It reminded me of the beauty of the night season when the Lover of my soul, my Keeper, my True Hope comforts me with his songs and when I can respond to him with my own.
Yes, Lord. In your presence, even the nights are better.
Yet all day long God’s promises of love pour over me.
Through the night I sing his songs,
for my prayer to God has become my life…
So I say to my soul,
“Don’t be discouraged. Don’t be disturbed.
For I know my God will break through for me.”
Then I’ll have plenty of reasons to praise him all over again.
Yes, living before his face is my saving grace!
Psalm 42:8, 11 TPT
I grieved my mother’s death ten years before she died. Like a lot of nurses her body gave out under the physical strain of caring for people. Pain forced her to leave her perfectly starched cap on the shelf and her white stockings in the drawer. She never gave up her duty shoes though. Years after she went on disability she would lean on Dad’s arm and hobble in to the same shop downtown to buy another pair.
We assumed it was the pain meds that clouded her once brilliant mind -that or the chronic lack of sleep. Even after the pain gave her an excuse to stay in bed she seldom slept more than four or five hours a night. She would bake bread and wash floors before her day shift when she still rushed into the oncology ward for report. I don’t think she knew how to sleep more than that. She was the hardest worker I ever knew. Sitting still was a sin. A dreamy bookish daughter was a totally alien creature to her.
The Alzheimer’s kind of snuck up on us. But she knew -and wrote final letters to her children and gave instructions for her funeral while she could still write. We found them stored in her security box.
My greatest grief came early in the disease process after we finally sat down for the heart-to-heart she had been promising for so many years. She finally listened.
An hour later she repeated a question that made me realize she had not retained a word of what I said.
I grieved for the conversation that would never happen. I drove home and stopped at a roadside rest area when I couldn’t stop the tears. I never cried like that again, even though I was aware, at every visit, of saying goodbye to another little part of her that was gone forever.
The disease progressed relatively slowly. Dad was heroic in his efforts to care for her by himself, but after he had a mild stroke and wouldn’t consider moving and none of us lived close enough to take over the 24 hour intensive care she required, there was no choice but to find a facility to look after her.
She was a lousy patient. This frail little lady who was too weak to lift a piece of sandwich to her mouth decked two nurses she considered to be incompetent.
Here’s the other embarrassing thing. Mom was never racist -well, perhaps mildly, but less than most people of her generation — but to her it was 1930 something in Saskatchewan and she was a young girl who had never seen a person of colour before. She was very frightened of the staff who were all, with the exception of one fiery no-nonsense Scottish woman, Asia or Jamaica born. She didn’t know what country she was in. She thought she had been abducted.
There was one night though, when she and I sang our way through a dozen hymns. She didn’t know who I was, but she knew all the words and even sang harmony. After she sang she told me about the Jesus she was singing about. She lit up, “Oh, he’s wonderful.”
Two minutes later she was crying out in agony. When a young patient was rolled through the hospital on a stretcher she thought it was her dear brother who been killed in a car accident. He died in that accident sixty years before, but her grief was as fresh as if she was hearing the news for the first time.
One afternoon while out for a hike I cried out to the Jesus she loved and asked him to please take her. I hated to see her suffer. She was so confused and no position the nurses put her in was comfortable.
Two hours after I prayed my brother called. Mom died –two hours ago.
I didn’t cry.
Dad said he was holding her hand as he read a book. She had been in a lot of pain that day. When he looked up again to check on her, her eyes were focussed on something on the other side of the room. He said she had a look of surprised delight on her face, as if she recognized someone she loved and had been waiting for. He tried to see who it was, but before he could ask Mom, he knew she was gone.
When I was sorting through my mother’s things in drawers and closets I found bits of rolled up paper with bible verses written on them. Promises. I knew that at one point she had memorized huge portions of scripture and quoted it at night when she couldn’t sleep. I took the verses and put them in a wooden box. They are my treasure.
Yes, I have a good inheritance.
Charis: Subject to Change 