Category: suffering

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Church Signs: H.O.P.E.

The other day on my bus route, I saw a message on a church sign. The message was the acronym HOPE, with the letters standing for Hold On Pain Ends. As always, the wheels started to turn. I thought, “You know, that’s true. Pain will end at some point, either during our lifetime or when we die.” Then I thought of another way to look at it.

The message could be, “Hold on, pain will be redeemed.” I know that doesn’t work as an acronym, but that’s the way it goes. In Colossians 1:27, Paul writes that the hope of glory for the Christian is Christ in us. Paul also says in that chapter that his sufferings serve in some way to continue or complete the sufferings of Christ himself. Paul saw his sufferings as part of the sufferings of the Messiah. The ancient Jews believed that Israel and the world would have to go through great suffering before the inauguration of the age to come. Paul, and the early Christians, believed that Jesus had undergone that suffering on the cross, and had begun the age to come with his resurrection.

Because the new age is not fully realized until Christ returns, there is still suffering to undergo. The early church got this. One of the reasons they could rejoice in the midst of persecution and suffering was the belief that the suffering they endured served to advance the kingdom in some way. They believed that because Christ in them was their hope of glory that their pain would not only end at some point, but that it would also be redeemed by God.

Much of the church today doesn’t get it. A great deal of what is taught and practiced in churches is designed to alleviate and play down suffering, if not to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Jesus told us that we would have trouble in this life. He never promised that life would be a piece of cake. Paul doesn’t say that we have Christ in us, the hope of our best life now. It is true that we are glorified with Christ. It is equally true that the completion of that glory will only come when we see him. Our redemption is now, and not yet.

Take heart in your suffering. There is hope. Christ in you seals your glory. Your suffering will end, some day. It will also be redeemed for good.

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Suffering and Glory

“Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.” So says Eliphaz, one of Job’s “comforters.” Unfortunately, it is easy for us to “comfort” others in the same way. We sometimes don’t know what to say when someone is suffering, and we go ahead and say it anyway because we feel we should say something. So much of what we say can come across as uncaring or cliche and usually does more harm than good. Often times, simply being with the one who is suffering and being quiet is the best thing we can do at first.

Suffering is a fact of life, and Scripture recognizes this. One of the characteristics of the Christian faith is the recognition that we suffer. Many of the other religions of the world seek to escape suffering, or teach that it is all a state of mind. Unfortunately, within Christianity itself there are a couple of streams that see suffering as something to avoid or escape. Some preach that suffering is something that comes straight from the devil, and that God wants us to not suffer. Others preach that we will one day escape this evil old world, and in the meantime we just put up with it. Both groups miss the idea that God works through and redeems our suffering. So, where does the connection between suffering and glory come in?

In Romans 8, Paul tells us that our suffering doesn’t even begin to compare with the glory that will be revealed to us. Just before this statement, he says that this suffering enables us to share in Christ’s glory. It seems that our suffering is an indication that we are children of God and fellow heirs with Christ. The early church understood this. They saw their suffering as bringing the kingdom to earth the same way the suffering of Jesus did. That’s why they could rejoice in their troubles.

Paul continues to state that the very creation is groaning and waiting for the final redemption of our bodies. We live in a broken world and will deal with that brokenness until Christ comes again. We can take comfort in knowing that God is with us in our suffering. He knows what we are going through, because he suffered in the incarnation. We also can know that the sufferings we go through
are things that  our Father can and does redeem and work for our good and for the good of his people. God works through our troubles to make us more like Jesus.

Paul goes on to tell us that we not only will be glorified with a glory far surpassing our suffering, but that we are already glorified. God has begun the glorification in us and will finally bring it to completion when Jesus returns. We can look at our suffering and see it not only as something that will bring God’s glory in us in the future, but also something that is bringing God’s glory in us in the here and now. We also know that there is absolutely nothing that the powers of this world or the powers behind those powers can do that will rip us out of our Abba’s loving arms.

When we suffer, let us take heart in the realization that God is with us in the midst of our suffering, and that he is working through it for his, and our glory.

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What’s Neglected in Worship

This morning, Josh turned me on to this article on the tendency of the church to neglect the reality of tragedy as a part of worship, instead turning to a form that gives the impression that the Christian life is all sweetness and light. I wonder if we try to forget the stuff of life in our worship because we really don’t trust God to redeem every part of our life, and don’t really believe God’s heart is good toward us.

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Thursday

Tonight is the night that Jesus began to show us the full extent of his love. He gathered with his disciples and performed the work of a lowly household slave by washing their feet. He then served as the host of the Passover meal, reworking it to be something that would commemorate his sacrifice for us. After the supper, Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he begged the Father to let the cup of suffering go on by him. I believe that in the garden, Jesus began to experience all the grief and agony that is common to those of  us who are human beings. Had he not been upheld by the Father, the grief would have been overwhelming. As it is, his sorrow is unfathomable to us.

As I think about that night, there are some things that I feel God wants me to learn. The first is the sacrificial love I am to show to others. As Jesus not only gave his life, but also humbled himself to do a dirty, abasing job, so I am called to do whatever it takes to show love to others, especially to my brothers and sisters in Christ. While I may not be called to host dinners, I am called to invite others into the presence of the One who gave his life. I can do this by proclaiming the Gospel to those who haven’t embraced it. I can also live out the Gospel as I relate to others and let them see Jesus in me by my love.

As I look at Jesus in the garden, I see a God who has gone through pain and suffering. I don’t believe that the Father intends for us to live a pain free life. Instead I believe that Jesus entered into our pain and grief while here on earth, and that he calls us to also enter into his suffering. I don’t like suffering at all, but it is a huge comfort to know that Jesus has experienced what I go through, and understands. I don’t belong to a god who tells me to buck up and take it like a man. I belong to a Father who understands, who is there to comfort me in my affliction, and who has redeemed, and is redeeming everything in my life. I am part of a kingdom whose history is a salvation history, a kingdom where all things will finally be made right, a kingdom whose King went through the worst that death and hell could muster and came out victorious. Because of this, there is nothing I need to fear.

May you find comfort and encouragement in remembering this night.

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Lessons From The Man Who Ate New Orleans Part 2

Two of the seven cardinal virtues of New Orleans are generosity and resiliency. It may seem strange to put these two things together, but I hope to be able to relate them to each other. In Webster’s dictionary, generosity is defined as freedom in spirit or act, especially readiness in giving. Resiliency is defined as the ability to recover from or adjust to misfortune or change. Both of these virtues are characteristic of New Orleans, and both should characterize those who follow Jesus.

Children of God should be the most resilient people. We should be able to adjust to change and recover from misfortune because we have resources to draw on. First, we have a Father who is sovereign over everything, who loves us with a perfect, everlasting love, and who always does good to us. We also have the Holy Spirit to comfort us and guide us. The third thing we have, or at least should have, is a family, a community of believers through whom God works. It is in relationship to others that we can be loved and comforted, and we can then love and comfort others who go through similar troubles. I don’t believe any of us can become resilient outside of community and relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We tend to think of generosity in terms of giving money or material things. That is one aspect, but being generous involves much more, and it is in that much more that this virtue is related to resiliency.As we become more resilient through the stuff we go through, we are called to freely give to others what has been given to us. We may give money or other material things. We may give work of some sort. Our gift may be words of encouragement and comfort, or simply a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on. Again, we must be in community. We cannot truly be generous with our resources unless we are in relationship. Without relationship, our words and actions can be empty or they can even cause further harm. The flip side of being generous in giving is being willing to be generous in our receiving. It takes humility to admit that we need help, to let others know what is going on in our lives, and to allow them the privilege of being generous in their giving to us. That is something that is hard for many of us, myself included. But it is a vital part of living in community.

Let us be generous to our brothers and sisters. Let us freely give and freely receive. As we serve one another, let us be strengthened so that we are resilient when tough times come.

Part 1 is here.

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Bread and Life

Two weekends ago, Jan and I participated in a forum on food, creativity, and togetherness called A Place at the Table. The event was put on by a group of local artists called Friday Arts Project. We were blessed to be able to help, in a small way, our friends organize and put on this event. A Place at the Table brought together  nationally known speakers such as Molly O’Neill, Peter Reinhart, Tom Hanchett, and local barbeque provocateur Dan Huntley. We experienced a number of thought provoking talks, a film about food and community in New Orleans, and some absolutely fantastic food.

Peter Reinhart is a professor at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte and is considered an expert on all things bread. On Saturday, he gave a talk on bread. That’s right. Bread. As Reinhart said, all writing about food is about something else, so his talk was about much more than just bread. The talk was titled, “The Leaven Factor: Bread as a Living Symbol of Who We Are as a People.” The theme was bread as a universal symbol of connectedness. I hope my thoughts here do his talk justice.

The word “companion” comes from two root words meaning “with” and “bread,” therefore a companion is “one with whom we break bread.” Breaking bread with a person means that you accept them. It also means that you are willing to share your life with them and make yourself vulnerable. As I wrote in Table As Truth, the masks come off around the table. Sharing food with another takes us out of ourselves, if only for a little while, and allows the other to get a peek behind the curtain.

The way we get bread is a metaphor for life, especially the life of faith. When the grain is ground into flour it dies. That is the first step. In leavened bread, yeast is then added. Yeast is a living thing that brings life to the flour. As the yeast works, the flour is transformed into dough. The dough rises and is kneaded into the shape the baker wants. Then the dough is placed into the oven to be baked. During the baking process there again is death. The yeast is killed by the heat of the oven so the bread can bake without growing anymore.

After the bread has baked, it is then ready to be a source of nourishment. The death in the baking process is necessary in order for the bread to be something that is good to eat. I don’t know too many people that eat dough on a regular basis. It just doesn’t seem to have the same appeal as a warm loaf of bread. Henri Nouwen, in Life of the Beloved, speaks of the bread used in communion and how it is taken, blessed, broken, and given. The bread must be broken before it can be given.

Life as a follower of Jesus is much the same. Jesus said that whoever wants to find their life must first lose it. We must die to our own ambitions, to our own way of living life, in order to be made alive in Christ. I don’t see much in Scripture that tells us to come to Christ so all our problems will be solved, with everything we ever wanted in this life there for the taking. Jesus simply says, “Follow me,” and then lets us know that doing so means we give everything else up. In dying to ourselves, we find that we have true, abundant life. It doesn’t stop there though. The dying process is not a one time thing. Jesus calls us to take up our cross every day. That’s more than just carrying a burden through life. As we go through our our day-to-day, we are called to die to what we want and do what our Lord wants. Like the dough in the oven, we die in order to be something that nourishes others. Like the communion bread, we are broken in order that we might be given. In the process, we are transformed, like the dough, into something that brings life to those who taste and glory to the One who shapes us and “bakes” us.

Let us not despise the grinding of the mill, the heat of the oven, or our brokenness. We can be assured that they are forming Christ within us and indeed making us bread for the world.

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The Larger Story

This past summer, when the wildfires hit Colorado, John Eldredge and a friend were having a meal together. They were discussing the fires and the possibility of being directly affected. They talked about what they thought Jesus was saying through everything. They both said, “Trust the Larger Story.”

This is a good thing to do throughout life in general. We live in a world that is broken, and we deal with broken people. Not only that, we are broken ourselves. Stuff happens in our day-to-day lives and all around the world. Not a day goes by that we don’t hear or read about tragedy and death. Sometimes we are the ones experiencing those things. We get sick, jobs are lost, friends disappoint. Sometimes we just struggle with living. But, that is not the whole story.

The story is not about us. We are not the heroes. We are living in God’s story, the story of a Kingdom and the restoration of all creation. It is a much larger story that spans eternity. We are in that story, and we all have a part to play, whether big or small. It is that story that gives us hope and encouragement.. The thing we need to do is take our eyes off ourselves and focus on Jesus and what he is doing. That’s the hard part. We tend to be so wrapped up in what is happening to us in that moment that we forget that there is more going on than what we can see with our limited vision.

A few weeks ago, Dan Edelen at Cerulean Sanctum wrote a good post about Romans 8:28. In this post he spoke of the good for which God works all things, and the fact that the things that happen to us don’t always seem to fit into this verse. Dan asks,

“What if the Creator’s intention for ‘those who love God’ isn’t primarily for the individual crushed by circumstance? What if the ‘those’ consists of the greater mass of Christendom?”

 What if the intention is for the overall good of the Kingdom? The early church believed that the Kingdom spread through their suffering, just as it had been inaugurated in Jesus’ suffering on the cross and his resurrection. Believers who have suffered for Christ through the centuries have understood this. Here in the West we have a hard time grasping this concept. Our vision of our faith is extremely personal.

Remember that the Larger Story began long before any of us arrived, and it will continue to be played out long after this life is over. It is a story that is about the Creator and the love he has for his creation. That story will come to its climax. Perhaps then, we will look back at our part in the play and say, “Now I understand.”

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Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given Part 3

This is part three of a four part series.

As we are able to claim our blessedness, we can then, “face our own and others’ brokenness with open eyes.” Henri Nouwen ends his chapter on blessedness with these words. The next chapter is on the third word that Nouwen found useful in identifying the movements of the Spirit in our lives. That word is broken.

“Broken” is a term that most of us in the church don’t like to hear or think about. We do love hearing about the “broken body of Christ,” because it speaks to us of what Jesus did for us on the cross. We love to hear about the power of sin being broken, even though we sometimes live as if we were still under its sway. What we don’t like to think about is the idea that we have been, are, and will be broken. But, it is true.

We live in a broken world. All anyone needs to do is look around them or watch the evening news. The creation is broken. It is being restored, but it is still broken. Take a look at the folks around us. They are broken people, and much of the heartache and misery in the world is caused by broken people breaking other people. No one escapes being broken. Nouwen puts it this way,

“Instinctively we know that the joy of life comes from the ways in which we live together and that the pain of life comes from the many ways we fail to do that well.”  

I think Nouwen is correct when he states that, just as we claim our chosenness and blessedness, we must claim our brokenness. We must own up the fact that we have been hurt in the past, may be hurt in the present, and will be hurt in the future. That’s part of the job description. After owning up to our brokenness, we then can respond to it. We do that in two ways, by befriending it and by bringing it under the  blessing.

Our first response to our brokenness is to befriend it. That seems counterintuitive to us. Our first, and sometimes only response is usually to run away, to avoid that which is causing us pain and convince ourselves that if we ignore it it will go away. The problem with that approach is that it doesn’t bring healing. I believe that our tendency to run from pain is a contributing factor to some of the mental health problems in society, and to many, if not most of our relationship problems. We are afraid of pain, of heartbreak, of suffering. If we do find the courage to embrace our pain we then find that we have started down the road of healing. Nouwen writes,

“The deep truth is that our human suffering need not be an obstacle to the joy and peace we so desire, but can become, instead, the means to it.”

Everything in our lives, good or bad, joyful or painful, can be part of the path we take to being fully human. This is a hard concept to grasp. We can easily see how the good in our lives brings us to glory, but it’s another thing entirely to see our suffering in the same light.

The second response to suffering is to put it under the blessing. Like the first century disciples who asked Jesus if the man’s blindness was a result of his sin or his parents’, we usually look at suffering as an indication that we’re bad people. There are many voices out there that tell us that if we just do things the right way, or  if we are really God’s child, then we won’t have to suffer. I wonder what the apostle Paul, or the Christians being martyred for their faith today would say to that. Suffering does not necessarily mean that we are bad people. It does not mean that the negative voices in our lives are right. We must listen the voice that calls us beloved children, the voice of our Father. Our brokenness does not cause God to love us any less, it does not cause him to see us in a negative light.

As we live in our blessedness and take our brokenness there and put it in the proper perspective, we find that the burden becomes lighter and the way becomes clearer. We can then see the suffering as a means of  purifying us. Ask a grape vine if pruning is something it enjoys. If the vine could feel and talk, it would tell you that pruning is painful. I mean, how would you like to have a limb hacked off? The vine would also tell you that the suffering of pruning is worth it because it produces the abundant harvest of grapes that allows us to share wine with our friends. Sometimes there are things in our lives that need to be pruned away. While it is a painful process, it is also an indication that our Abba loves us, and is forming us into the people he wants us to be.

As the bread in the Communion, we are taken in order to be blessed. We are blessed so that we can be broken. As the bread cannot be distributed unless it is broken, so with us. We are broken so that we might be given.

Part 1
Part 2

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How God Became King 2

In How God Became King, N.T. Wright states that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross was the inauguration of the kingdom, that “The cross serves the goal of the kingdom. just as the kingdom is accomplished by Jesus’ victory on the cross.” Jesus’ victory was accomplished by taking the worst the kingdoms of this world (symbolized by Rome) and the one behind those kingdoms (Satan) could throw at him, and coming out the other side, having conquered death and hell. The establishment of this kingdom was not what everyone expected. It was a kingdom based on sacrificial love, rather than a kingdom like all the other kingdoms.

Wright goes on to state that Jesus followers saw themselves as participating in Jesus’ kingdom through their suffering. Jesus was very clear that following him meant suffering. We here in the West seem to have forgotten that. One one side are “Job’s friends,” who see any suffering as a result of some sin in the individual’s life. On the other side are those who see all suffering as coming from Satan, so all we have to do is have enough faith to “speak” the suffering away, in effect pretending the suffering doesn’t exist. Of course, if you don’t have enough faith to speak the trouble away, then it is your fault just as it is on the other end of the spectrum. I believe both ends of the spectrum miss the boat.

I was having a short on-line discussion with a friend the other day about an article I had read about a theology of suffering. The article stated that we need to teach that God doesn’t always heal, but that he is always present with us in our suffering. My friend made the comment that it can be as damaging to believe in a God who is present but doesn’t heal as it is to have a God who can heal but lets us suffer because of our lack of faith. I agree with that. This is where the idea of suffering as the means by which God’s kingdom comes to earth changes a lot of our thinking and practice. If we suffer, and the kingdom advances through our suffering, then we can say with Paul, “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5) 


Paul also stated that he wanted to know Christ, to know the power of his resurrection. We have no problem wanting that as well. But then Paul goes on to say that he wanted to participate in Christ’s sufferings, becoming like him in his death. We have a hard time getting hold of that. But if the suffering of the followers of Jesus advances his kingdom, then we shouldn’t see it as a result of our sin or an attack of Satan (although those may be contributing factors), but rather see it as something that will bring glory to our King and good to his kingdom.