When The Cup is Empty...

I am well today! Actually this week has been a pleasant one for me filled with grace and a few rainbows, some peace and tranquility, both of which I have not experienced in so many moments in succession for some time now.
Yet, with the horror in Haiti and the difficulty and pain in so many peoples’ lives, I feel as if I must in some way be in solidarity with all those suffering – if not in any other way, then, to be in prayer.
There is the opposite of a cup of grace at times and in seasons of lives and that is when the cup appears empty! When tragedy strikes, when “…the day is as long as the night is dark…” when, “…things knock you down you don’t even see coming…” when, you are in your own Gethsemane, when the Dark Night of the Soul consumes your being. There is indeed, “…a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…” – all the fullness of being human and experiencing life can in no way be lessened by ignorance for as C.S. Lewis explained, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Sorrow makes us all children again – destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.” I believe that this is true – our personal or shared grieve reduces us to a place that is strange and we would prefer not to know, but in some strange way to know and be in those places at times and seasons is to know what it is to be human and gives each of us the compassion and resources to become communities for each other and share each other’s lives and burdens.
This does not mean any of it is easy, no - it is hard, hard, hard! And it makes us angry and it makes us lash out and it makes us ask God why. Where are you God? Is there no other way for this world to be…is there a way out of this madness? Where are you? Where are you?

As Bono expressed in lyrics,

Jesus, Jesus help me
I'm alone in this world
And a fucked-up world it is too.

Tell me, tell me the story
The one about eternity
And the way it's all gonna be.

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man.

Rich Mullins asked Jesus similarly in lyrics,

Did You ever know loneliness
Did You ever know need
Do You remember just how long a night can get?
When You were barely holding on
And Your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in Your sweat

Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While You're up there just playing hard to get?

We all in our own ways have to wrestle with these things and answer the questions and it is my prayer that the cup of grace will be filled again for all of us at just the right times while on our journey’s so we can “…walk on…” and find the strength to continue on while even in the deserts of our journeys and find the love of God in friends and solidarity in our communities. I am assured that God is faithful and as he said to Jeremiah, “…do not be afraid….for I am with you and will rescue you….in days to come, you will understand this…”He will hold us! We are held while we tremble through the long, cold, dark night by Jesus!

This is my hope and my prayer:

That our Abba, Jesus and the unquenchable Holy Spirit will come now into all of our lives and begin a profound and sincere healing, a miracle of grace and love that will turn into a passionate life of the Spirit for us and free us to dance in the ecstatic dance of the Trinity - and that all this will happen within the hospitality of our community of love. All praise and thanks to Jesus Christ.