Broken, Part 3: Inseparable

Romans8:26-39

There is that old popular story called Footsteps in the Sand, that has been immortalized on cards, posters, plaques, blankets, and more. The story is about a man who has a dream that he is taking a walk along the beach with God while scenes from his life flash before him; at each of the most difficult periods of his life he sees only one set of footprints, which he assumes were his alone. He asks God “Why did you abandon me during my times of need, leaving me alone?” And God answers him, “Those were the times I carried you.”

It can be a very comforting story, although I wonder if for some people, in some circumstances, it does not feel like enough. There are times in the lives of men, women, and even children, when they feel nothing if not abandoned; that they could not feel less like they are being carried in the arms of a loving God. The footsteps in the sand story may be hard pressed to offer any consolation in some of those moments.

There are passages of our life’s journeys that might feel as though evil has taken the upper hand and God has been defeated, or has simply chosen to turn away. Many thousands of children in the Sudan must have felt that. They fled from their homes during the long, brutal war between the north and the south. They were orphans; many had escaped being killed because they were away from their village tending the cattle when the armies arrived.

These children walked with nothing but the clothes on their backs, thousands of miles to refugee camps. They suffered severe malnutrition, violence, hunger, sickness, and exhaustion; attacked by armies and turned into child soldiers. And when one of them later tried to make some sense of all he had seen, all he had been through, he said that maybe God just grew tired of us.

And it is not hard to envision these children on their seemingly endless journey as we read Paul’s words when he asks: Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword separate us from the love of Christ? Will they?

It is a very serious question in need of a serious response – for each one of us. Lives are broken on a massive scale whenever nations tear themselves apart by war. But lives are broken on a smaller scale every day in every place: when families go through divorce or the loss of a loved one; when we suffer the wounds of poverty, illness, or loneliness. When bankruptcy leaves us empty-handed. When bodies are wracked by cancer, when souls are wounded by depression, when hearts are broken by loss, we know the feeling, that sense that perhaps God has grown tired of us and we are alone with our suffering. Romans speaks to all of us who have ever walked through that valley of the shadow of death.

And it is the mistake, the fault, in our faith to sometimes insist that as Christians we should be happy all the time, living carefree blissful lives. It is a fault of the faith we sometimes teach to assume that if only our faith were strong enough there would be no broken bodies or wounded souls. It is in our nature, I think, to want all the dark valleys to be well-lit and sanitized. Yet this is a mistake, because the promise of our faith is not that our lives will be easy.

We would like to say God will keep us safe. We are a safety-obsessed society, as we seek to control nearly everything around us. And while car seats and bike helmets are very good, it is absurd for us to think we can – or should – make this world safe.

There is a lot of talk these days about safety. I wear a safety pin, as many others do, as a way of saying I will do my best to give shelter, give safety, to anyone who is being harassed or threatened by another. But at the same time, I know that I am not capable of making anyone safe. God does not make the world safe for us. God is not safe.

One of the children asks, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, if Aslan, the lion, is safe; the answer is no, of course not. He is not a tame lion. Aslan is not safe, but he is good. And there is a distinction and a difference between safety and goodness. We must understand this difference as we navigate the world in which we live.

When my firstborn was two years old we would take walks – and if you have ever taken a walk with a two-year-old, you know that the progress is painfully slow. For much of the time you are standing still while the two-year-old is examining a blade of grass or a dandelion. One day she was out in front of me a few steps and suddenly we both saw a dog in the yard ahead of us. I saw that the dog was bigger than the child, and that the dog was not on a leash. Then I saw the dog begin to run down the sidewalk toward her and I immediately closed the gap between us; I scooped her up from behind just before the dog reached her, and I carried her in my arms until we were out of harm’s way.

This was one of many times I carried my child to keep her safe. But there were also many times when I knew I could not keep my child safe. I cannot keep my child from experiencing pain and suffering.

When we become adults, the moments of pain become more painful, the suffering can grow more intense. One day she called me with her suffering and I couldn’t take it away from her; I couldn’t pick her up and carry her through it to the other side. I said she needed to pray, and her response was, “I already tried that.” And I realized I had failed to teach her as well as I should have done. But perhaps that was because I didn’t have the tools myself.

For we do not know how to pray as we ought, Paul writes to the Romans. And the Spirit needs to intercede for us. We pray for God to take away the pain, and God says in response that all these things – the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly – all things work together for good. That for those of us who are being conformed to the image of Christ there is no hardship that can separate us from the love of God.

And although we do not revel in the sufferings – our own or anyone else’s suffering – we know that with God’s help we will overcome. Although we do not sanction evil in any of its forms, we proclaim that we have God as our companion even through the darkest valleys. Although we are being shaped by the cross of Christ every day, we remember that the cross revealed his glory, his victory over death. In Christ we are more than conquerors.

We will not find safety in this world. We cannot remove pain from our lives. But know that, through it all, we and God’s love are inseparable. This love makes it possible for us to find space for healing in a world marked by brokenness. The strength we gain from Christ makes it possible for us to accompany others through their sufferings. Together with them we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and the transformation he makes possible.

Christ will not leave us alone – this is the strength of Paul’s message to the Romans. Pain and suffering will exist, as we are still living in a broken and sinful world, but Christ will be our companion through it. God will not keep us safe from harm – but Christ will be with us through it.

Brokenness is a part of our world. It is a part of human life. But God sustains us in our brokenness and makes it possible for us to find healing, wholeness, and unity no matter what we are facing. For nothing in this world can separate us from God’s love.

Photo: Mothering God holds the world within her. 

Broken, Part 2: Labor Pains

Romans 8:12-25

This spring, after my aunt’s knee replacement surgery, she was telling me how hard the rehab was. I told her it would be worth the pain. She said, “That’s what they say. They say it’s like childbirth. I’ll forget it later.”

I practically fell on the floor. Forget it later? I asked my aunt, “Did you forget that labor hurts? Because I sure didn’t.” The memory of pain stays with us, shapes us; and, over time, we decide what kind of attitude we will have toward it.

Some of us wear our pain like a badge because it shows how tough and strong we are. I have taken part in the competitive childbirth storytelling events a time or two (My labor was 12 hours long! Well, my labor was 24 hours long!). It makes us feel strong. But others, at the mere suggestion of pain, would say, “There’s a drug for that,” because, in their minds, no pain is good pain. But, the reality is, pain is a part of life. Pain of the body, pain of the spirit, pain of the heart – all of these are a part of life.

There is a young woman I know who has had her ups and downs with substance abuse for several years now. The other day she wrote on facebook that she was observing an anniversary, a bittersweet remembrance. It was one year since she overdosed and almost died. A few weeks after that day she entered rehab, not for the first time, but hopefully for the last. After rehab, she went on to a half-way house program, and to this day she continues her journey of recovery. She said something that reveals a particular truth about addiction, and about life, really: that since she has been learning how to live drug-free, she has felt more fully alive. She has laughed and actually felt it; she has cried and actually felt it. She has grown and succeeded, and also at times she has failed, and was able to feel all of it.

Addiction tells you, “You don’t have to feel any pain.” But it is a lie.

It’s a lie that many of us are drawn to, even non-addicts, because we are always looking for ways to avoid pain. We all have ways of distracting ourselves, or anesthetizing ourselves, trying to protect ourselves from the pain and suffering of life.

A woman once gave my teenage daughter some dating advice: “Always break up with him before he has a chance to break up with you.” Because if you can beat him to the punch, no one will ever have a chance to break your heart.

Some friends, Carrie and David, once told me about a time, when they were relatively new in town, they met a couple whom they very much enjoyed being with. They had struck up a conversation somewhere, and realized they had a lot in common. But when Carrie and David invited this couple to dinner, they declined. They said they had decided they would not pursue any new friendships, because they realized that in the kind of work they were in, people come and go, they move on to other jobs in other cities. They decided that they did not want the pain of having to say goodbye to friends when they moved away. Their solution was to not make any more friends.

When we try to avoid pain we end up avoiding life.

I know a man, Roger, who said when his daughter was born that he was going to put her in a bubble and keep her there until she grew up and was ready to get married because he didn’t want her to ever suffer any pain. And Roger didn’t want to experience the pain of watching her in pain. He was joking, but only sort of.

If there really was a foolproof method of avoiding any and all pain and suffering; if there was a pill, with no side effects, that would guarantee a pain-free life; I wonder how many of us would take it. I wonder if the Apostle Paul would have taken it.

By the time he wrote this letter to the Romans, Paul had experienced a lot of pain for his faith. He wrote in his letter to the Philippians that over the years, in all his experiences, he had learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. Everywhere he went he had submitted to being fully dependent on the mercy of God, trusting in God’s grace and the hospitality of strangers, all for the sake of carrying the good news far and wide.

But he had not always been that way. We know a few things about the man Paul from the stories written about him in the book of Acts. At one time in his life, Paul was a man who inflicted pain on others so that he would not ever have to experience the pain of uncertainty or doubt. At that time, Paul was a Pharisee called Saul, a son of Abraham. And when he encountered the apostles of Jesus Christ, he made it his mission to eradicate them from the face of the earth because they carried a message that turned his steadfast, long-held beliefs upside down and this was more pain than he could bear.

The Pharisee Saul was there when one of these apostles, Stephen, found himself surrounded by an angry mob. In spite of the threat, Stephen continued to preach the gospel forcefully. Then, under the watchful eye of Saul, the mob dragged him out of the city to stone him to death. Saul stood and watched over the brutal stoning of Stephen. He watched and he approved.

After that, Saul journeyed on to Damascus, because he had heard there were more of these so-called Christians there. He was anxious to arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem for trial. The story in Acts says that he was breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. So fearful was Saul of uncertainty, so fearful was he of anything threatening the beliefs he had committed himself to. So fearful, he was willing to kill to avoid its pain.

It was on this journey, though, when everything changed. For the first time, on the Damascus road, he heard the voice of Jesus, saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He was knocked to the ground, helpless. For three days, Saul was stricken with a kind of blindness so that he could learn to see in a new way.

After this he was a new man, with a new name and a new mission. Paul, for the first time, knew the truth of the good news and was no longer afraid. From this point on, he lived his life for the sake of Jesus Christ and his love for the world.

From this point on, Paul knew that he was more than willing to suffer for the sake of the gospel, because he now had something new, something with great power: hope.

Hope might not sound like much, if you are only accustomed to hearing it expressed in the most superficial ways. One says, “I hope the sun shines today,” another says, “I hope it rains.” It’s a desire, usually not too deeply felt, that means little and is often of small consequence. “I hope you have a nice day,” I might say to someone, but it will mean little or nothing to me if it is or is not a nice day. In this sense, hope is a flimsy word.

But this is not Christian hope. The hope that comes from faith is something entirely different. It is not a desire; it is a gift of the Spirit, one that gives the ability to see, to know, the possibility of a world beyond what now exists.

Hope is the things that moves us forward. None of the prophets would have been able to carry their message out into the world without hope. Dr. King would not have been able to get up again and again and tell about his dream if not for hope. We would not have written letters to our senators and congressmen asking them to remember the least of these children of God but for our hope that there is the possibility of a world where the hungry shall be filled with good things. None of us would be able to do so many of the things we do, large and small.  Dottie comes in on a Wednesday evening to prepare for JAM, in hope that the people will come on Thursday noon and the room will be filled with great fellowship. Last Wednesday morning a dozen or more of us came in to set things up for our one-day VBS, in hope that the children would come, and when they left they would know God loves them and we do too. And there are others; young men and old women who see visions and dream dreams, who stand up and proclaim a bold belief in a world that is waiting to be born.

Knowing that the pain and sufferings of this time are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed.

Hope is the thing that makes us better. Hope in the midst of suffering, like a woman in the throes of childbirth, knows there is something beyond what can be seen. And hope is what will get us there.

photo credit: By Kattiel - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60695252