But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. – Isaiah 53:5 (NRSV)
In Isaiah’s poem about the suffering servant Christians see images of Jesus the Christ. As we celebrate Christmas, do you celebrate the reason Jesus came? What was the reason Jesus arrived? What is it about this baby that you believe is a gift?
I once heard a story about a boy who stole comics from a library. His father found out what he did and together they went to the library, gave them back, and the father forced his son to apologize. On the way home the boy got a stern lecture.
That summer when they were on vacation the boy stole comics again, this time from a store. When the arrived home the father found them, confronted his son, and this time burned them in their fireplace. As the fire burned he gave his son a stern lecture.
A couple of months after that the boy stole comic books from a bookstore. This time the father said, “I am going to have to spank you because you keep doing this.” However the father didn’t want to hurt his son and after spanking him he told the boy to wait there for a lecture and think about what he did. The father went outside the room and closed the door. Loud enough for the boy to hear the father started crying. Not wanting his son to see him like that he went and washed up before he went in to lecture the boy.
Years later the boy’s mother recalled that the boy stole comic books and asked him if he stopped because his father had spanked him. “No,” he said, “I stopped because I heard dad crying after he left the room.”
The lesson the boy learned wasn’t in punishment, but in the realization that he hurt his father. Even at Christmas when we see that little baby, there is in his eyes the whole pain of the world that he will take. It is easy for us to just see a baby, but if that’s all we see we are no better than the Innkeeper who had no idea what was going on just outside his Inn. When we celebrate Christmas we are celebrating that God was willing to cry out loud instead of punish, and to be hurt instead of inflict pain. There is a lesson we can learn here, let us pray that we learn it.
With hope and joy,
Garrett
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Minister's Minute from January Issue of the Journal of Hope and Joy
Again we begin a New Year. Life is a series of new beginnings really. That is a comforting thought to me. There have been many times in my life I have messed up, or something has happened somewhat beyond my control, but which nevertheless severely affected me. At many such moments of difficulty I wanted to give up. The moment was too overwhelming and I discovered myself trapped, stuck in that moment in time like it was some prison. The prison of course was my own creation. No moment can hold us, but we allow the circumstances of moments to haunt us, to grab onto our thoughts and our dreams and steal them from us. In those quiet moments of desperation when peace seems fleeting at best, or nowhere at worst, we exist fearing how life will play out, how life will continue, how we will ever make it.
Yet each of us has made it through such valleys before and will make it through them again, it is the nature of life. Sometimes life is miraculous, pregnant with promise and potential. We might call such moments our mountaintops of glory. We have all experienced them, and God willing we shall all experience them again. A graduation, a birth, a chance encounter with God, only you know your mountaintop experiences, oh and what experiences they must have been. I have found myself high atop such mountains and in my jubilation I have seldom seen the valleys down below. Nevertheless there are always valleys down below because the truth is life is a journey and not a destination. Below each mountain is another valley, and beyond each valley is another mountain, and we keep walking because that is what we do.
So the New Year arrives and I am reminded that I keep on walking, because that is what I do. Somehow God walks with me, pushing me along when I would rather collapse in despair, pushing me along when I would cement myself in joy, pushing me along because there is so much still to experience. Not every day will be easy, but as the pressures of life are overcome, like a piece of coal that becomes a diamond only under severe pressure so shall we one day discover that we have become a jewel of infinite worth. Life is a series of new beginnings, and while the journey we have already travelled has helped create who we are, it is the journey we have yet to travel that will eventually make us complete. Each of us is a work in progress, and God would not have it any other way, and should we be truly honest neither would we. Something about the pains have allowed the joys to be so much better, and something about the joys have allowed the pains to contain some amount of meaning, even if words cannot express what that meaning may be.
However there is only one way to keep on going, and that is to humbly walk with God. Without that ever-vigilant and ever-present partner we would be lost. So let us say with the psalmist, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise!” I have seen many scenes in movies where a frightened character is told by the protagonist something like, “Keep looking at me, keep looking at me.” The goal of course is that the fear might stop overwhelming the poor character who cannot handle the situation. In our difficulties it is God who says, “Keep looking at me, keep looking at me!” If we look then we will be able to sing and give praise in the pain because our hearts will be fixed on God, and then at some moment we will notice the valley is over and again we are climbing up a mountain, a new mountain, a new beginning, as a new person. When we get to the top of the next mountain we still must sing that same psalm and God will still say, “Keep looking at me, keep looking at me!” because that moment no matter how glorious will be better with a friend.
I hope and pray that this year is full of new beginnings for each of us, and from whatever befalls us in the course of this year we emerge on the other side a more precious jewel than we entered it.
Riding the Wave of the Holy Spirit,
Garrett
Yet each of us has made it through such valleys before and will make it through them again, it is the nature of life. Sometimes life is miraculous, pregnant with promise and potential. We might call such moments our mountaintops of glory. We have all experienced them, and God willing we shall all experience them again. A graduation, a birth, a chance encounter with God, only you know your mountaintop experiences, oh and what experiences they must have been. I have found myself high atop such mountains and in my jubilation I have seldom seen the valleys down below. Nevertheless there are always valleys down below because the truth is life is a journey and not a destination. Below each mountain is another valley, and beyond each valley is another mountain, and we keep walking because that is what we do.
So the New Year arrives and I am reminded that I keep on walking, because that is what I do. Somehow God walks with me, pushing me along when I would rather collapse in despair, pushing me along when I would cement myself in joy, pushing me along because there is so much still to experience. Not every day will be easy, but as the pressures of life are overcome, like a piece of coal that becomes a diamond only under severe pressure so shall we one day discover that we have become a jewel of infinite worth. Life is a series of new beginnings, and while the journey we have already travelled has helped create who we are, it is the journey we have yet to travel that will eventually make us complete. Each of us is a work in progress, and God would not have it any other way, and should we be truly honest neither would we. Something about the pains have allowed the joys to be so much better, and something about the joys have allowed the pains to contain some amount of meaning, even if words cannot express what that meaning may be.
However there is only one way to keep on going, and that is to humbly walk with God. Without that ever-vigilant and ever-present partner we would be lost. So let us say with the psalmist, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise!” I have seen many scenes in movies where a frightened character is told by the protagonist something like, “Keep looking at me, keep looking at me.” The goal of course is that the fear might stop overwhelming the poor character who cannot handle the situation. In our difficulties it is God who says, “Keep looking at me, keep looking at me!” If we look then we will be able to sing and give praise in the pain because our hearts will be fixed on God, and then at some moment we will notice the valley is over and again we are climbing up a mountain, a new mountain, a new beginning, as a new person. When we get to the top of the next mountain we still must sing that same psalm and God will still say, “Keep looking at me, keep looking at me!” because that moment no matter how glorious will be better with a friend.
I hope and pray that this year is full of new beginnings for each of us, and from whatever befalls us in the course of this year we emerge on the other side a more precious jewel than we entered it.
Riding the Wave of the Holy Spirit,
Garrett
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