Tuesday's Trust - God Enters and Companions Our Suffering… and A Poem About Her Suffering...

Tuesday's Trust

God Enters and Companions Our Suffering…

and 

A Poem About Her Suffering...

Suffering is a huge, unavoidable element in the human condition. To be human is to suffer. No one gets an exemption. It comes as no surprise then to find that our Holy Scriptures, immersed as they are in the human condition, provide extensive witness to suffering…

Lamentations, written out of the exile experience, provides the community of faith with a form and vocabulary for dealing with loss and pain…

Neither explaining nor offering a program for the elimination of suffering, Lamentations keeps company with the extensive biblical witness that gives dignity to suffering by insisting that God enters our suffering and is companion to our suffering.

"She cries herself to sleep at night,

tears soaking her pillow.

No one's left among her lovers to sit and hold her hand.

Her friends have all dumped her."

~from Lamentations 1

~Introduction to Lamentations, found in one version of The Message by Eugene Peterson, page 1474,

Verse from Lamentations 1, page 1475.

~~~

And later that night, rather in the wee hours of this morning, I wrote a poem, along with many, many tears to lament her suffering…

Poem: On Grappling with her Suffering that Night…

Her fall was astounding;

there was none to comfort her.

~Lamentations 1:9b

What?! On the night that you fell,

That fatal night (once Satan was through),

But before he sounded Death's knell,

There was none there to comfort you?!

Years spent with us, wiping your tears,

Feeling your pain, crying with you,

But in that bleak night's terrorizing fears,

No mommy or daddy there to comfort you?

How can this be? It's just not right:

We were not there to comfort your fright.

And then our God enters my plight…

But I trust God was there,

Holding you close, caressing your hair;

My baby girl, your Father was there!

He took you Home; He rescued you;

He held you close that whole night through;

He wiped your tears, poured out His love…

Ev'n as He does now for us… since you went Above.

Where would we go? What would we do?

If we did not know our God did rescue you?

Held in God's arms, sleep well now my child;

Since He holds us too, we'll join you in a while

When all tears shall cease underneath God's sweet smile…

Poem - On Grappling With Her Suffering that Night - Angie Bennett Prince - 08/27/2012, 2:00 a.m.

“Christ was in agony in prayer, Luke 22:44. Many when they pray are rather in lethargy, than in an agony. When they are about the world they are all fire; when they are at prayer, they are all ice.”

~Thomas Watson

Picture, thanks to Daily Scripture e-cards
Quote, from Heartlight's Quotemeal