Tuesday's Trust - Are We Victims... or Tools in the Hands of the Master?

Tuesday's Trust

Are We Victims...

or Tools in the Hands of the Master?

Jesus' sufferings

Jesus suffered throughout his earthly life. Jesus did not only suffer at (His) death or under Pontius Pilate (as the Apostles' Creed says). He suffered

• at His birth in a poor stable,
• when He was a refuge from Herod,
• in the misunderstandings of His family,
• when the disciples were unable to comprehend Him and His mission,
• in His homelessness and fatigue,
• from the incessant pushiness of the crowds and the constant critique of the religious leaders, and so forth. Similarly we diminish His sufferings on the cross when we limit them to the physical or even the spiritual.
• Imagine the emotional weight of bearing all our accusations and rejections, the sin of the whole world -- of being for our sake... made to be sin {He} who knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). Envision the temptations hurled along with the scorn and abuse of the bystanders; why not take again Your divine power and hurl a few lightning bolts at them?

We don't want to ponder the extent of Christ's afflictions because we don't want to bear them ourselves. We are like Peter rebuking Jesus for forecasting the fullness of His agony. Peter wanted a triumphant Messiah, not One calling him to follow Him into hardship.

...Oh, Jesus, don't let this happen to You -- because, if we follow You, we will be called to divest ourselves of comfort and warmth, to find ourselves in a cattle stall, a place of muck and cold, humility and poverty and persecution.

~Marva Dawn

Jesus wept over his best friend dying.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem not responding to Him ~ How I longed to gather you like a mother hen gathers her chicks, but you were unwilling...

Was Jesus a Victim?

So, would Jesus be considered a victim? Nowadays we call people who go through such torment, persecution, grief, and ridicule, "victims."

Scripture says Jesus suffered the cross and the shame of the cross for the JOY that was set before Him...to be seated at the throne at the right-hand side of His Father. He suffered, not because He had to, but He chose to be obedient to His Father to complete God's will for us.

Can we suffer the desperate void left by her loss for the JOY of reuniting with her that is set before us?

Our son Nathan's view of his baby sister who was not only a sister, but a very best friend to him, is

"God knew the one thing I wanted the most for my little sister was for her to go to Heaven. And even though it may take a lifetime of (my) suffering (from) her not being here, I'll gladly accept it knowing she's in paradise, (awaiting) me to join her."

~Nathan Prince

*****

Is our weakness and suffering a tool in the Master's hands for a greater love for our child than we can imagine?

Is our debilitation actually a tool used for more spiritual empowerment in the hands of Creator God?

Is our weakness possibly a part of the "ground-wire" for God's earthly circuit to His resurrection power?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus informs us that it is only the poor in spirit, the meek and the mourners who will see the kingdom of God (and its King) break into their lives.

~John of Ruysbroek

Perhaps Jesus has a different set of scales or a different standard of weights by which He measures the weakness we carry around with us everyday in our child-loss grief. May He realign our values to fit with His so that our lives become His vessel for what is more important for eternity than for what is needed for our present happiness and comfort.

May we trust Him to use us in His ultimate eternal plan. And may we trust Him in the weakness of our grief's stupor ever to carry us...

Friday's Faith - Coming Unglued ~ Power in Weakness

Friday's Faith

Coming Unglued

Lost. Father, who am I? What do I do?

Spinning. Round and round. I'm coming unglued.

Opportunity. Please throw out the "spam";

Loss. After child-loss, reveal who I am.

Tethered. Held to Your side, You will hold me

Together. Though my world flies apart, be

Lord. Sanity centered in You restores

Wholeness. In weakness, You'll hover e'en more.

"Peace. My peace I give you, not as the world

Gives. E'en amidst losing your baby girl,

Rest. You're being made anew to fit My

Kingdom. Trust My design and know that I

Reign. And My Kingdom's not of this world:

Life. Centered in Me. Like your baby girl..."

*******




Power in Weakness

God's ways often turn our illusions, our assumptive beliefs on their head. We know that in Child-Loss grief, we are at our abject weakest, and we keep waiting for "our strength" to come around the next corner. And indeed it may, only to be followed by more abject weakness as we remember once more that horrible truth that Our.Child.Has.Died.

So, while we are waiting for "our strength" to come, God Himself comes into our weakness. His Light seems to shine most brightly in our abject darkness. His Love seems to wrap its arms around us best when we are on our knees in abject weakness mourning our lost child. His Comfort rings most clearly in the still silence of our grief's stupor. His Presence blesses us and becomes our strength.

(Indeed, if we do reclaim some of "our strength," His Presence seems to recede to the background and when we are again aware of our aloneness, our position of us-against-the-world in our stark weakness, we become desperately frightened, panicked even.)

But when tears come, again releasing some of our grief and pain, His Nearness comes back with its Healing Power, holding us close to His heart. When will we learn, our weakness, admitting our power is all poured out, invites Him in all His imminent power to step in with Healing Love, Comfort, and Holy Presence.

It then becomes that accepting our weakness means inviting His strength to come along beside us, and we become inherently stronger, but humble in knowing that truly, We Need Him Every Hour, Every Day, of Each and Every Year of our lives ~ 24/7/365.



*****



"According to [John of] Ruysbroeck, we can also invite the presence of Jesus into our lives by cultivating a sense of our own destitution without Him. In so doing we create what he calls a valley of humility. Of course, attaining genuine humility is not easy.

We are prone in our fallen nature to find security in the pretense of our own strengths. Our culture tells us that it is the self-reliant and self-confident who prosper. Many of us have been raised in the "age of self esteem."

In fact, these self-building strategies bring death to our souls...

It may be helpful to remind ourselves that at His first coming Jesus came not to the high and mighty, but to pious God-fearing folks of the countryside. Mary received Jesus into her life as a humble handmaiden of the Lord. . . .

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus informs us that it is only the poor in spirit, the meek and the mourners who will see the kingdom of God (and its King) break into their lives.

Ruysbroeck tells us that the one who wants to practice the presence of Jesus needs to "take his stand upon his own littleness. . . ."

~Mark Harris, quoting John of Ruysbroeck (capitalizations mine)


*****

May we rest in the paradox in which we are living, that it is when we are weak that we are strong, for that is when the very Spirit of God "tabernacles" over us...

But (Jesus) said to me,

"My grace is sufficient for you, for [your] power is brought to its end in weakness."

All the more gladly, then, will I boast in my weaknesses that the power of Christ [not mine!] may tabernacle upon me. Therefore, I take delight in weaknesses, in insults, in necessities, in persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ, for when I am weak, then I am strong.

~2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (translation by Marva Dawn*)



*****



Lord, High and Holy, Meek and Lowly,
Thou hast brought me to the Valley of Vision
where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.
Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.
Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine.
Let me find Thy light in my darkness,
Thy life in my death,
Thy joy in my sorrow,
Thy grace in my sin,
Thy riches in my poverty,
Thy glory in my valley.

~Prayer of an anonymous Puritan

Picture: "Red Flower Girl" ~Rudy Chorvat

Poem - Coming Unglued - Angie Bennett Prince - 9/1/10, 4:00 am

Marva Dawn, Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God, p. 41