In the week that was, God has revealed in amazing ways, to me personally and my church family back home, how His power can work in human weakness, how His Spirit can speak order into chaos, and make beautiful things out of the mess the people find themselves in.
We are told that one way to help children or people in general, work through trauma is to tell them stories aboutheroes. People who have made it through difficult times, because ithelps them to understand that my pain, my loss, my grief, my affliction isn’t the last word. There is more ahead.
And what is Bible other than, well it is a few other things, but most of scripture is a book of stories, isn’t it? Stories of God’s faithfulness from generation togeneration to generation to generation, not always taking people out of their problems immediately, but God working within them. Often using people as his main instrument of working and of help. So that when itsays, God hears and listens, the way God generally does that is throughyou and I hearing the cry. That’s the way it often works itself out inconcrete ways. We, as people created in God’s image, created for good works that he prepared in advance for us to do as his workmanship. We are the ones to listen to the pain of others. We are the ones to carryout God’s defense of others. It’s the way God most often works.
After September 11, 2001 (9/11 attack) and September 6, 2010 (death of Pastor Luis Pantoja), forget because we have done our time, we’ve done our good deed, but God never forgets. God is always at work and so ought we to be, at work as his instruments in the world. God remembers,do we? God hears, do you and I hear? God takes up the cause of thosein pain, are we willing to? And if you are one of those who is avictim, who is grieving, who is afflicted, who is oppressed, I also wantyou to know that you are not alone. You are not without hope. Godhears. God values you far more than you value yourself and by God’sgrace He is going to use us as his people, as his family to be ablessing to you. May God give us that grace.
He gives grace. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah words are a call to the adventurous of spirit, those brave enough to see their reality from a different perspective. His words were encouragement to those who by the grace of God accepted heartbreak as a window into their soul, and as the opportunity to expand life possibilities – the chance to engage different gifts and different challenges differently than they had in the past. Isaiah threw down the gauntlet and challenged his people to acknowledge their brokenness but to reject their defeat. God would strengthen them, accompany them, and renew them so that something great would emerge from their suffering and heartbreak.
Where are you broken? Where are you feeling defeated or faint or weary or afraid? Friends, an invitation is extended to let Jesus heal you. Today you are invited to let Jesus silence your problems, heal your wounded-ness, and give you back a life that is broken and yet whole. That is the promise, and although it will look different for each one of us, the promise is the same. Will you trust that? Will you be strong and vulnerable enough to open yourself to the possibility of being made whole?
I can’t talk you into it. I’m not even sure exactly what it looks like. But I do know this, healing and wholeness is for the brave of heart, for those willing to be weak so that they might be strong; for those willing to name and see their problems so that they might be silenced once and for all. God may not kiss the pain away, but God will you give you the strength to bear it, in part, because you will not bear it alone. That’s what this church family is for – to bear one another’s burdens and to seek God’s way in the world together. And together we shall soar like the eagle into a future overflowing with promise. The future overflowing with promise is the other side of heartbreak.
[1] Previous three paragraphs influenced by James Smith, Celebration Publications, 2009, p. 4.
[2] Excerpted from James A. Harnish, FaithMatters: Great Gifts from Difficult Times, January 22, 2009. [3] Javier Viera CCNYC
[4] Isaiah 40 21-31
Confluent Thoughts 