Saturday, September 17, 2011

When the Lord Breaks You Down

And he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; Blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 01:21, NKJV).
Pain is personal and concrete.

As C.S. Lewis wrote a generation ago, there is no such thing as a sum total of pain, no matter how many individuals are suffering, each suffers only their own, and not another's agony. There is no one being who suffers additive pain. There is perhaps one exception to this law, and that is God Himself, but we don't know that for sure, and perhaps never will.

What we do know is that theory and philosophy, generalities and nuance, are all annihilated in the fiery furnace of one's own pain.

Pain is ultimately inexorable.

No matter what form it takes, physical, emotional, or spiritual, it is a thing - an experience - of substance that can transform everything about a person's life. It can do this slowly, or at the speed of light. It can be expected, or assail us like a thief in the night. In the end, pain wins.

The minions of pain - disease, injury and loss - can be perceived a mile away, or emerge explosively from ambush. The attacks can come in brief breath-taking (literally) episodes, or lay siege to us like a well-equipped army around the walled-city of our mind and body.

Again C.S. Lewis from The Problem of Pain: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world… [Pain] removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul… Tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless… Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself…Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness… Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal… God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense."

Some of the most poignant, tragically bereft, and heart-stoppingly flawed heroes of Scripture knew all about being broken by the Lord of Heaven. 

For make no mistake, God takes full responsibility for everything that happens in the life of every one of His creatures, especially the agony of life in this fallen world. And we are all, every one of us, most emphatically, His creatures. 

He may not be the author of every event, in the sense of being the instigator, but He makes no bones about being accountable for allowing these to happen, and often, more often than we might like, micromanaging each excruciating detail.

It is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17, NKJV).

Adam, Abel, Noah, Job, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ruth, Esther, Naomi, David and Mary are just a few of God's beloved who were refined in the crucible of pain. Adam forfeited Paradise, Abel lost his life to fratricide, Noah his world, Job his children, prosperity, and health, Ruth her home, Esther her royalty, David his kingdom, and Mary, the love of her life.

That pain serves a divine purpose is a conviction of the deepest faith in the child of God. That very conviction is what gives Christians hope and meaning even in the deepest well of the most prolonged agony, and makes our suffering absolutely distinct from the world's suffering.

But pain still hurts, sometimes so profoundly that we cry out in helpless wonder and horror at our having to abide even a nanosecond of what can befall us.

And of all the pain in the world's vast inventory of that which hurts, perhaps the pain of grief is the worst.

And it is in this, above all else, where Christ reveals just how much a Savior He is, for His death - His and the Father's unspeakable loss - gives us that sustaining hope of impossible reunion.

I do not pretend to fully understand the will of my Father in Heaven. I do not comprehend why a beloved child must suffer and die, or why a man or woman in the prime of life must meet a tragic end, or why, after a long and faithful life, a godly elder must fade away in the ignominy of senility. And a life lived, however long or brief, in chronic pain or disability is beyond my tolerance to even contemplate.

But neither do I fully understand the blessings of eternal reward in a realm of unimaginable satisfaction in that existence we are promised in the life to come.

But this I do know, that my Lord is good and loves me with an everlasting love. He has shown me His mercy and grace more often than I can number, even though I know beyond doubt that I deserved not even the least of one of His gifts. And this knowledge, if not strength or noble stoicism,  gives me an escape from utter despair, and enables me to crawl, however falteringly, into the light of His hope. Thus,

...brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. (James 1:2-4, NKJV). 
Indeed we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord--that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful. (James 5:11, NKJV).
And I know this, as well, that there will be a time and a place of safety for us. 

“And God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4, NKJV).