DEPTHS of experience; that’s what abundant life is all about.
But we walk away from the deeper life when the pain comes. We cannot have the heights if we are not prepared to go to the depths. This is life.
So I have learned, initially against my will, that there is a kind of life experienced in the deep that is immensely valuable!
Even as we endure the pain of heartbreak, we can, in that depth, experience a depth that makes us bigger, better, more compassionate, and touchable.
The underlying truth of this, of course, is that the Presence of God provides the purpose of entering. So actually entering the abyss is the very way to access special revelation and the Presence of God.
An example… a poem, and then a comment on the poem, from my journal:
O wonderful bread,
A completely healthy lament,
It’s a funny kind of torment,
Goal, satisfaction! Let him reign.
In any old choice of time,
It enjoys a tort of experience,
It is the presence of God that is used,
Oh, how I love you, Divine!
Having played music that elicits serene, ethereal emotion almost immediately, looking through the visual records of the moment we lost our young son, there is the precious healing practice of inviting the revelation of Spirit. There is hunger for his Presence. Wherever his Presence is, I seem willing to go, but the thought of his Presence leaving for any reason makes me shudder. And God said to me as I went into this healing anguish, “I will never ever leave you, I will never ever forsake you.” Walking through the Nathanael Marcus experience, here and with us physically, again, is a gift that I can immediately access whenever I want to remember it. What a wonderful sharing of healing. I praise God!
This is very significant, others who are sick like me should know about this healing that comes from intentionally going into what I call ‘healing’, anguish.
***
Hope transcends any experience of anguish in the knowledge that God is with us as we walk toward healing by entering into pain.
However, such a healing can only come when we have discredited all claims on ourselves, which is a Christian’s obedience to his Lord.
God knows that heartbreak is terrifying, bitter, numbing and irritating. However, when we enter into distress with our Lord, there is a healing that can be accessed.
God blesses every act of courage to deal with the truth of our pain. And his is the strength in the condition of our weakness that will bring us forward.
© 2015 SJ Wickham.
