healing
The Battle Against Despair
FOR ADVENT: Hope
By Linda Rex
I recall a conversation I had a while back with a beautiful lady who has seen the struggles and difficulties of life. She had recently experienced the cruelty of unjustly losing her livelihood after having worked very hard to finally have her own home and to pay off all her bills. When she was finally starting to see some light in her dark life, she was knocked down again.
In the midst of this situation, the one thing she needed, she said, was to have some glimmer of hope. She needed to be able to believe that there was a good reason to go through another day, to try one more time to do things in a way that was honorable and ethical in the midst of a culture that told her to take the easy route of dependency, addiction and sloth.
To tell her to keep believing, to insist that she try one more time, was not enough. She had reached the end of her resources—there wasn’t anything left inside to carry her, and there wasn’t anything left outside in her life to lift her up. She felt all alone, forgotten, unloved, and unwanted. She felt a deep sense of despair. Nothing could help her.
Or so she thought. It was in the midst of this place that she encountered the living Lord.
How Christ comes to meet us in the midst of our despair and darkness is unique to each of us. He met his people Israel in a time when they despaired of ever hearing from God again—a time when they were held in the grip of a pagan government which disrespected their heritage and their God. And he came to them in a form they never expected—a tiny, helpless infant lain in a manger by a common carpenter and his bride.
One of the ways Christ came to this lady in despair was in the people of faith he began to place in her life. These particular people began to share life with her, expressing God’s love for her in various ways.
They did not always do what she expected. They did not pay her bills or take care of her problems the way she wanted them to. But they did provide her with love and concern and prayer. They did provide her with the means to better her life and to grow as a human being into greater Christlikeness. It turns out that through them and through the Word of God, they gave her what she needed most—hope in the midst of her despair. They introduced her to Jesus Christ.
Christ is our hope in the midst of despair. He is that divine Word from the Father of Lights who entered our humanity and joined us in the midst of our human depravity and our broken world. He even “became sin for us,” taking on that very thing that keeps us in our despair and brokenness. And he died our death and rose from the dead, giving each of us a new life, a hope in the midst of despair.
In sending the Holy Spirit, God through Christ, made a way for us to begin to experience the kingdom life even now in the midst of our broken and sinful world. We are able to interact with God in a real way through our union with God in Christ and our communion with God and one another in the Spirit. Through Christ and by the Spirit we are able to experience a living, ongoing relationship with God himself, coming to hear and understand the living Word of God personally, and having God’s way of being written on our hearts and minds.
This means that Christ becomes and is a real part of our day-to-day existence. As we respond to his nudges by the Holy Spirit, we come to experience healing, hope and change in our lives. Things don’t always get better immediately as far as our circumstances may go, but somehow that doesn’t matter so much to us anymore.
In the midst of our struggles and dark places, God begins to shed his light. We begin to have a new perspective. We begin to see and experience possibilities when there were none before. God brings us into relationships that are healing, helpful and restorative. He begins to work change in our lives.
But God doesn’t do this all by himself. He calls us to participate with him in this transformation. We can continue to wallow in despair if we wish, and deny the real grace God offers us in the midst of our suffering and grief. We can cling to our darkness if we wish—God allows us to do that. But he calls us out of it and offers us himself, through Christ and by his Spirit, as a means of lifting us up and transferring us from darkness and despair into light and life.
As participants in God’s light and life, we need to be sensitive to the work the Spirit is doing to draw others out of despair and darkness. We are called by God to share with others the Word of life we have been given. We can give them a real hope in the midst of despair when we introduce them to Jesus Christ and show them God’s real love and compassion.
We come into their lives the way God in Christ entered ours—humble, insignificant, and truly human. We share the mundane parts of our existence with them, along with the relationship we have with our heavenly Father through Christ his Son and by his Spirit. We give what we can to help them become the children of God they were created to be, so they can also be full participants in God’s love and life. This is our participation in what Jesus is doing in the world today.
Offering someone just a little bit of hope may seem trivial. We may think we have to accomplish great things in the world or become well known for our Christian faith and piety. But the simple gift of hope can be life-transforming and healing in more ways than we could ever imagine. Just ask someone who has received it.
Lord, thank you for coming into our world and joining us in our humanity and our brokenness, and for healing us from the inside out. Thank you that you offer each of us hope in the midst of our despair. Do not leave us here in our dark places, but please come to us and lift us up into your arms of love and life. Make us compassionate to others who need the gift of hope. Through Jesus and by your Spirit. Amen.
“How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, …” Psalm 146:5 NASB
Tomorrow Still Comes
By Linda Rex
This morning my pastor friend Carrie and I were driving up I-65 as the sun was coming up. As the sky turned glorious colors of gold, orange and blue streaked with purple and gray clouds, I felt God’s presence and peace in the wonder of a new day dawning.
I thought about the conversations I had had recently with Mom when we talked about what it would be like to live in the new world God has for us beyond death. We talked about how Mom would be able to garden to her heart’s content and not have to worry about the weather and the weeds.
For me, saying goodbye to her these past few days was so much like saying, “See you in the morning!” There is the momentary sense of the loss of immediate companionship. But then there is this delightful sense of expectancy, as the mind and heart begin to look forward to a renewal of the relationship and the opportunity to spend more time together doing things we love.
There is an assurance of a future time when we will share sweet companionship together again. This is what the apostle Paul meant when he said that we do not grieve as those who have no hope. Indeed, we have a great hope through Jesus Christ. He has purchased eternity for us, establishing a new humanity through his life, death, resurrection and ascension.
But what about the loss? Doesn’t it hurt?
Yes, actually it does. And how much it hurts and how we deal with that hurt is unique to each of us. For we each grieve our losses and experience our relationships in our own particular ways. Grief is not a one-size-fits-all process.
And how our losses occur and what those losses actually are in our lives is specific to each person in each situation. That means that for some people grieving a significant loss may be a simple and easy process, where others may grieve in a very complex and difficult way because of grief over unresolved losses in the past, or because of complications in the relationship in the past. To compare oneself to another person in how we are affected by our losses is not a wise thing to do.
Sometimes complications in our lives hinder the grieving process. There may be difficult circumstances surrounding our loss of a dear one that may prevent us from being able to deal with our feelings about the loss right away. It may be much later—days or weeks or even years—before we are able to come to the place where we can face the truth of the pain and begin to allow ourselves to feel it, grieve our loss and begin to heal.
As friends and families of those who have experienced a great loss, it is important for us not to be afraid to engage the suffering one in a healthy relationship of comfort, compassion and companionship. What a person who is grieving needs is not instruction, criticism or indifference. The one who has suffered a loss needs to know that they are loved, and that others are sharing in their grief and loss with them. It is important to come alongside them and to offer them our love and support, even if it means just sitting silently with them in the midst of their pain.
I have been very blessed to have family and friends join me and my children in the midst of our loss. I am grateful God brought my mother and me back together after life had taken us away from each other. He redeemed the difficult situations in our home and now I have happy memories to carry with me until I see Mom again. There is much reason for gratitude in the midst of this loss.
So rather than having a great sorrow about losing Mom, right now I am feeling comfort and peace. Perhaps that will change later when life slows down and I can truly grieve the loss of the mother who invested so much in my life. Meanwhile I am looking forward to that new morning when the sky will be even more glorious than anything I saw today. May it come soon!
Heavenly Dad, I am grateful that we are not alone in the midst of our losses, but we have you and each other to carry us through. Thank you that in the Spirit, you and Jesus join with us in our suffering, offering us comfort, peace and hope. Lord, lift us up. Enable us to find and live out the new life you have in mind for us as we let go of the past and our loved ones, and move on into the future. Through Jesus and by your Spirit we pray. Amen.
“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” 1 Corinthians 15:22 NASB
Blinded by the Light
By Linda Rex
I was watching a show the other night in which a crime took place within the walls of a building. Everything about the crime involved hiding—the murder of innocent people, hiding bodies in cement, and so on. The objective of the main characters of the show was to bring the truth to light, thereby exposing the guilty parties and bringing them to justice.
It put me in mind of the conversation at our small group the other night. We were talking about how those things we bury inside of us can drive us and control us. They tend to become or fuel our vices. And often it is not until we bring those truths to light, by opening them up to the scrutiny of safe people, that we experience freedom from the habits or addictions which control us.
Anyone who has walked the path of a twelve-step recovery program knows how important it is to speak the truth, to be transparent about one’s brokenness and failures. And they know it’s most helpful to speak this truth to someone who has already walked that path of recovery, since they are most likely to be compassionate and gracious, while at the same time refusing to allow dishonesty about one’s problem.
One of the things we learn to do as we grow up is how to hide. We hide our hurts, our shame, our guilt, and we often find ways to self-medicate so we don’t have to face up to or feel our brokenness. We create an image or mask so that we can continue to function in our world.
Brokenness is unacceptable, especially when we’ve adopted a religious viewpoint that demands moral perfection. Darkness is preferable to light in these situations, because there is great fear and dread in being exposed for who and what we really are.
The thing is that we forget that God is light and in him, the Scripture says, is no darkness (1 John 1:5). In Psalm 139, the psalmist poetically describes how there is no place where God is not present—even the darkness is as light to him (v. 7, 11-12). The apostle John wrote how the Word came into our cosmos and took on human flesh, and became the light of the world, which lightens every man. (John 1:4-5, 9) There really is no way to escape the Light of God in Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
We cannot escape the Light God is, not even when we bury things deep inside ourselves. No matter how deeply we bury them inside, we still cannot hide them from the One who already knows all about them and loves and forgives every one of us anyway.
We cannot hide anything from God because he was, is and will be present in every situation and circumstance, and offers us his grace. He is intimately connected with our humanity through Jesus and in the Spirit, so he shares in all that we go through. He does not condemn—we are the ones who condemn ourselves and others.
Don’t get me wrong—just because God is present doesn’t mean that he is obligated to do anything about what we are experiencing. Most of the time we live, act and speak as though he’s not even present. We blame him for stuff that for the most part, we or someone else are responsible for. He gives us a lot of freedom as human beings and does not violate this personal freedom. God often waits until he’s invited and until it is best for all involved before he acts in situations.
This may cause us to feel that God is a capricious God, or a God who doesn’t care. Our view of God, unfortunately, is twisted or bent by the behavior and words of the people in our lives who were supposed to be reflecting God accurately to us.
Our view of God, then, if it is of a capricious, uncaring, unloving, God of wrath, will motivate us to hide. We will seek out the darkness, and having gone there, we will run as far from the Light as we can go.
Being in the Light is painful for someone who is seeking to hide in the darkness. This is why when someone is close to healing for some hidden grief or sin, they often find ways to avoid exposing themselves so they don’t have to speak the truth or face up to the reality of what they’ve done or what was done to them.
People who habitually live transparently and openly, in contrast, don’t try to hide their brokenness and failures. Rather, they are open about them and are willing to expose them to the scrutiny of others. They speak and walk in the truth. And as they do so, they not only find healing but they also help others to heal.
And notice, the focus in John’s writing was not on moral perfection, but on truth. Jesus is our truth—we live and walk and speak in him by the Spirit. He is our Light, and he enlightens each and every one of us broken sinners. And he does this so that we can bring that light to others who are hiding in the darkness.
There is much in this world that seeks to keep us focused on the darkness. There is a strong pull on each of us to hide and bury our true selves away. But the Light of God is already shining and there is no place to hide. There will come a time when every dark deed and thought will be exposed. But in Christ and by the Spirit, God has already provided a way for us to open our true selves to his Light even now.
We don’t need to hide, nor do we need to live bound by chains of darkness. We are not left alone in a dark world. God, in Christ and by the Spirit, is the Light of the world. Even now we stand, as we will then, in the brilliance of the glory of God in Christ and by his Spirit and share in the glories of the world to come. May our hearts and lives ever be open to his Light!
Father, the first thing you created in our cosmos was light—light that is a reflection of your unchanging, faithful divine light. You are the Light of the cosmos, present in all things at every moment. Thank you for the grace you give us that we can be real, living and walking in truth in your presence without fear. Thank your for calling us out of darkness into your marvelous light. Bring to light the hidden things so we may find healing and wholeness. Inspire and empower us to share that light with others so they may enjoy its brilliance as well. Through Jesus and by your Spirit. Amen.
“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” John 3:19–21 NASB
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