My Anniversay...A Post Script...

Thinking back to what I posted last week on this blog about my anniversary and all my feelings and all the emotions that were swirling within me and about some of the responses that I received about those posts.

To begin with my, anniversary posts were the most popular that I have ever written, there were even more readers of them than any of the Bar Church AP posts. That tells me that people are most interested in how we as humans deal with hurt and loss than anything else. What we can call our collective, shared human experience.

Striking to me are those who presume to know.

Know what another human being is going through…none of us can possibly know what it is like to experience another’s life. Not only did God not know what it was to be human until Jesus came and God lived as a human being as the writer of Hebrews expressed, “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered...” (Hebrews 5:8 TNIV).

The most comforting thing is simply to be with one that is hurting or suffering, it is not the words or the advice that is given that matters – those two things are actually quickly forgotten. What comforts are not words but presence…both human and divine. To be with another is to participate, to be in solitary with an aching friend. To be present and listen...

Look to the book of Job…where his friends, “… sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was” (Job 2:13).

Expressing hurt is to be human; being transparent and authentic is the reality of what we are, how we were created by God. The evil one wants to divide and conquer, to bind us up in our own selves and it is only through brutal transparency that we are free to be in the words of Irenaeus, “…man (woman) fully alive…” - as one of my favorite authors Anne Lamott has written, “God is more into honesty than anything else…” her argument being that God then has someplace to start with us - in our honesty.

As examples of that - look to the man who had the heart of God, David - if there had been anti-depressants in his time we would not have the Psalms.

David wrote,

“My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen on me. Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me. I said, ‘Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm’” (Psalm 55:4-8).

And…

“I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God. Those who hate me without reason outnumber the hairs of my head; many are my enemies without cause, those who seek to destroy me. I am forced to restore what I did not steal. You, God, know my folly; my guilt is not hidden from you. Lord, the LORD Almighty, may those who hope in you not be disgraced because of me; God of Israel, may those who seek you not be put to shame because of me. For I endure scorn for your sake, and shame covers my face. I am a foreigner to my own family, a stranger to my own mother's children….” (Psalm 69:2-8).

In the New Testament Paul glaringly writes of his present condition and struggles in his letter to the Romans,

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death” (Rom 7:15-24)?

And then in a letter to Timothy, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” (1Ti 1:15).

If Paul and David make such statements - how much more can we also speak of our struggles, difficulties, pain, anguish and moments of despair?


I say speak our hearts in all the brutal and raw honesty we can muster regardless of what anyone may say - as Paul wrote,

“Am I now trying to win human approval, or God's approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10).

My prayer is to agree with Paul,

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5).