Nothing scares me like pain. Physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain, you name it, it terrifies me. I’ve learned long ago that numbing it doesn’t make it go away, ignoring it or pretending it’s not there just makes it come up in ghastly dreams even worse than the reality of it. So that wasn’t a viable option for me. Instead, I’ve chosen to cling onto The Only One that can help. Pain, sneaky thing that it is, cared nothing for my resolve, so throughout the years has still come in all shapes and forms. Oh boy, did it come. The fact that I was clinging onto Him didn’t make it less painful one bit, any more than holding someone’s hand through an amputation doesn’t lessen the experience. But it gave meaning to my pain and that meaning echoed in eternity. Karl Marx said that religion is the opium of the masses because he thought it numbs the pain of true oppression coming from the governments. Naïve little Marx, how wrong he was. It numbs nothing, on the contrary it makes your senses even more heightened, and it increases the pain because the believer is in a predicament the atheist will never face. You’re holding onto The Almighty, The One who can turn a triangle into a square and when He doesn’t, a believer must face both his pain and a sense of betrayal while still choosing to trust. God doesn’t sedate you through pain until better times come along, instead He uses it for His purposes if you have the courage to let Him. Is it pretty? Absolutely not. Does it work? In the long run yes. I’m not going to lie though, I know people that couldn’t reconcile in themselves how a loving God that can do all things allows tragedy to happen, so they conclude He’s either not good or unwilling to help. I can’t fault them for their conclusions because it takes a truly insane person according to the human standards to determine that God is good regardless of their loss.
My most recent encounter with pain hasn’t been as I’d hoped. More accurately it has punched me right into a corner. It didn’t come unexpectedly. I prepared for it. I trained for it; Lord only knows how I’ve trained. It still knocked me out. I was under no illusion that it wouldn’t. The magnitude of the spot she occupied in my heart was bound to paralyze me once she was gone. I knew it was coming like a person whose plane is about to crash knows it’s imminent. So, I did what one does when they know they’re about to hit the ground and chances for survival are minimal, I locked in my seatbelt. I took all of God’s promises and wrapped them around my heart and waited for the impact, planning to survive if possible. I knew I wasn’t going to be one of those inspirational people that would give testimony about their plane crash and people marvel at their fortitude, I only hoped at the end I wouldn’t turn against The Only One who could help (Hosea 13:9). Once I crashed, I lost all sense of time and space. I couldn’t remember a single promise. I’m not sure I could have recited John 3:16 if pressed to do so. My soul’s ears were ringing with a dreadful refrain, “now what?!” I was aware I was still alive, still breathing but so empty and so alone that I couldn’t remember a time when good thoughts and feelings were filling that space. I felt abandoned. By her, by God, even by myself. Like a part of me has decided to flee the crash site because it didn’t recognize the crazy eyes of the survivor. I still prayed, I still read, I still functioned, but meaningless rituals were all I could offer. I didn’t outright rebel, I just checked out emotionally. There was no fist shaken towards heaven, just a closing of my eyes perhaps.
I kept hearing inside myself, “Is this it? Are you done now? Did this plane crash finish you off? Where’s your professed affection for Him now? Is this the sum of all your faith and hope? Is this what you are now, your pain? Are you really done now?” I had to answer it truthfully. After all I’ve made a deal with myself that I will not lie to myself. So, my answer was, “Obviously I’m not done! I’m just sulking. I can’t blame Him for this. I can’t blame her for dying on me and leaving me behind. I can’t blame life like some random idiot. I know better than that. I can’t blame myself because I haven’t caused it. I can’t blame the devil no matter how tempting that is and I really want to blame something as utterly absurd as that is. So no, I’m not done, only sulking…”
Then to my surprise, once the awareness of life has returned to me, I noticed my seatbelt still held. That it didn’t stop the plane from crashing, but I was still in my seat. Behold my seatbelt:
“Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The LORD has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: “Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak. The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.“ (Zephaniah 3:14-17)
Sing? Amid sheer sadness? Sing? With a broken voice? While I can only groan in pain? How can I sing The Lord’s song in a strange land? (Psalm 137:4) How can I sing when I am nowhere near where I should be? Answer: Because I have peace with God. Because He’s not holding a record of my sins against me, instead He took the record of my sins and nailed it to cross (Colossians 2:14) and silenced every tongue that rose up against me to accuse me. Because instead of justice I received mercy and pardon. That is reason enough to sing with a chocked voice, because He took away the judgement against me and cleared away my enemies.
“The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil.” In the midst of my crash site where I lie alone and scared, where no one dares to approach, my King is in the midst of my disaster. And although He doesn’t promise that evil won’t come, He does promise to give me a heart that will never again fear plane crashes.
“On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: “Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak. The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.“
Fear not although there’s every human reason to be afraid. Let not your hands grow weak even if right now it feels you’ll never be able to move a finger again. Why? Because The Lord, my God is right next to me. My God, not some lucky charm that has failed to protect me, not some principle or notion that I hoped could sustain me during a mental earthquake. The Lord, my God, The Creator of everything that is seen and unseen is right in the midst of my crash site. Not to observe the calamity or to take note of where everything landed, but a mighty One who will save. He will rejoice over me with gladness. Not just tolerating my presence, not reluctantly, not because the terms of the covenant demand it, no! He will rejoice over me with gladness. He will quiet me by His love when I want to scream, “where were You?!” He will open my eyes to understand that there’s no reason for Him to be here, but that the same love that pushed Him to the cross, the same love that pushed Him to look for me through all my mental meanderings where I’ve managed to lose myself time and time again, THAT same love brought Him amid my plane crash. He will exult over me with loud singing. God will sing! His joy will be so abundant that it will make Him sing. I know that when He laid the foundation of the earth “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). It’s not recorded if it even made Him smile, but for me, for you, for everyone that trusts in Him, He rejoices so much that He breaks into song! And not a timid song, loudly! That thought alone makes me weep. That the prospect of Him saving me makes Him overjoyed. Me! Useless, pathetic, unprofitable, fickle, doubleminded, me! That instead of throwing his hands up in frustration declaring, “you’re hopeless!” my redemption brings Him more joy than it did to create the world. If that’s not love, then I don’t know what is.
I don’t need for things to be a fairy tale on this earth, I know they can’t be. I don’t need to be spared the pain and the tears. It’s enough to know that my God sings for joy over me. My broken heart will heal. One day I’ll see her again. Maybe I’ll live through more plane crashes. But I know He’ll find me in them all.
by Cristina Pop
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