One day, Christian, you will walk down the street and people will immediately feel great comfort and security as well as a little trepidation like when a cop drives through your neighborhood, or past you on the interstate. Grow your prayer muscle, and let it be so now!
Eph. 2:6
I’ve been thinking about the connection between suffering and redemption... Christ’s own refining through suffering. And the way in which His suffering honors ours.
I used to think Psalm 22 was most significantly a foreshadowing of Christ’s suffering on the cross. But this week when I read it during our family devotions, I was enabled to view it from a different angle.
I think Psalm 22, the death Psalm, expresses the anguish of death which all of us experience at different points of our lives on earth.
The curse has brought us death:
- In our connection to our Creator. We long for assurance of our intrinsic value and place in the universe—to know that Someone wants us here and cares about the futility and anguish we endure in our heart of hearts. Yet sin constantly threatens to isolate and condemn us.
o David’s plight: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me? So far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but You do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.” (Ps 22:1-2)
o Christ’s experience: “From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’).” (Mt. 27:45-46)
o David’s reassurance: “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; You are the one Israel praises. In You our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and You delivered them. To You they cried out and were saved; in You they trusted and were not put to shame… for dominion belongs to the LORD and He rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before Him—those who cannot keep themselves alive.” (Ps. 22:3-5 & 28-29)
- In our connection to our fellow humans. We long to belong, to be accepted and understood, to be considered and valued by those with whom we share the highs and lows of humanity. Yet the longer we live, the more alone and victimized we feel as mistrust and defensiveness increasingly define our interactions with those around us.
o David’s plight: “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. ‘He trusts in the LORD,’ they say, ‘let the LORD deliver him, since he delights in Him.” (Ps. 22:6-8)
o Christ’s experience: “Two rebels were crucified with Him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at Him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” In the same way the rebels who were crucified with Him also heaped insults on Him.” (Mt. 27:38-44)
o David’s reassurance: “I will declare Your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise You…. All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before Him… Posterity will serve Him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim His righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!” (Ps. 22:22, 27, &30-31)
- In our confidence for the future. We long for a reason to hope, for the possibility of redemption and restoration, for the ability to pursue dreams and anticipate second chances. Yet we find brokenness all around us.
o David’s plight: “Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.” (Ps. 22:11)
o Christ’s experience: “Then He said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’ Going a little farther, He fell with His face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.” (Mt. 26:36-38)
o David’s reassurance: “I will declare your name your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you… The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the LORD will praise Him—may your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before Him, for dominion belongs to the LORD and He rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before Him—those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim His righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!” (Ps. 22:22 & 26-31)
- In our physical bodies
o David’s plight: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; It has melted within me. My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; You lay me in the dust of death” (Ps. 22:14-15)
o Christ’s experience: “After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), ‘I thirst.’ A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished,’ and He bowed His head and gave up His spirit… “one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” (Jn 19:28-30 &34)
o David’s reassurance: “But You LORD, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen… The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the LORD will praise him—may your hearts live forever!” (Ps. 22:19-21 & 26)
- In our individual sense of dignity and volition. We long for a clean slate, for the freedom to choose our own way, to shape our own participation in society. Yet so often we find ourselves stuck in roles and circumstances that we never wanted and being regarded in ways that shame and undermine our very identity.
o David’s plight: “Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.” (Ps. 22:16-18)
o Christ’s experience: “Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.” (Mt. 27:27-31)
o David’s reassurance: “For He has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; He has not hidden His face from him but has listened to his cry for help. From You comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear You I will fulfill my vows.” (Ps. 22:24-25)
When Christ took on and embodied Psalm 22, He wasn’t just fulfilling prophecy. He was honoring the human experience. He dignified the suffering and hopelessness we all experience. He said that our suffering is not without meaning or consequence. He demonstrated the centrality of pain and loneliness to the human experience and proved that rather than being our shame, suffering has the potential to be the most honored and purposeful statement our lives ever make—the crowning glory of our participation in the divine nature as “the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life.”
I watched The Matrix: Resurrections last night and a couple lines stood out to me as uniquely expressive of the human experience:
That’s it, isn’t it? If we don’t know what’s real… we can’t resist. They took your story, something that meant so much to people like me, and turned it into something trivial. That’s what the Matrix does. It weaponizes every idea. Every dream. Everything that’s important to us. Where better to bury truth than inside something as ordinary as a video game?
And
Quietly yearning for what you don’t have, while dreading losing what you do. For 99.9% of your race, that is the definition of reality. Desire and fear, baby
I think that is the reality our enemy seeks to impress upon every human. God has placed within us longings that are such a glaring testament to our identity and purpose, and yet we find ourselves settling for trivial pacification. We miss our high calling in the universe for the plight of eking out a bearable existence and buy in to the lie that all suffering is meaningless chaos.
I’m finishing up reading The Wounded Healer, by Henri Nouwen. It talks about the predicament modern humans find themselves in due to increasing chaos and brokenness in the world, and the implications of this context for those who would minister to others today.
So many of us feel like victims of circumstance just grasping at straws in the universe to try and form a life that makes some sort of sense. Hope for the future is mostly gone and we’ve settled for trying to make our own present bearable. Our third-person sentences tend to be critical and dismissive, and we hope that the honest vulnerability in our first-person sentences will earn us some measure of favor in the eyes of the person in front of us. Our experiences often don’t create the meaning and camaraderie that we hope for, and so we are constantly forced to look for a new a new group, a new agenda, even a new ideology. And often when these things don’t serve us we settle for the marginal safety of apathy.
Nouwen says that the leader of tomorrow (which I would call the leader of today since he wrote this fifty years ago) will be an articulator of inner events, a man of compassion, and a contemplative critic.
The articulator of inner events
The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life, who can give names to his varied experiences, need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering…
…only he who is able to articulate his own experience can offer himself to others as a source of clarification.
… he must first have the courage to be an explorer of the new territory in himself and to articulate his discoveries as a service to the inward generation.
This section reminded me of Ronnie Steven’s sermon about Joseph’s interpretation of Pharoah’s dreams. He made the statement, “All people of the world have dreams and longings. The children of God know where they come from.”
A man of compassion
If we now realize that the future generation is not only an inward generation asking for articulation but also a fatherless generation looking for a new kind of authority, we must consider what the nature of this authority will be. To name it, I cannot find a better word than compassion. Compassion must become the core and even the nature of authority.
… the danger is that [the Christian leader’s] skillful diagnostic eye will become more an eye for distant and detailed analysis than the eye of a compassionate partner.
A contemplative critic
More than anything else, he will look for signs of hope and promise in the situation in which he finds himself. The contemplative critic has the sensibility to notice the small mustard seed and the trust to believe that “when it has grown it is the biggest shrub of all and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and shelter in its branches.” (Mt. 13.31-32). He knows that if there is hope for a better world in the future the signs must be visible in the present, and he will never curse the now in favor of the later.
…he is a man of hope who lives with the unshakable conviction that now he is seeing a dim reflection in a mirror, but that one day he will see the future face to face.
And here’s the beautiful connection between all of this and the journey of growth in prayerfulness that God has had me on. Nouwen concludes this section of the book by suggesting that all three of these characteristics come to bear through prayerfulness.
Having said all this, I realize that I have done nothing more than rephrase the fact that the Christian leader must be in the future what he has always had to be in the past: a man of prayer, a man who has to pray, and who has to pray always.
There is so much more in the book that I found instructive, helpful, and affirming of things I was already discovering. I am feeling the need to grow in my sensitivity to the hints of other people’s inner reality, in my compassionate and prudent response to those hints, and in my spontaneity in prayer.
Our Sunday School teacher assigned to read the book of Ezra last week. I continue to be floored by what I read there. It felt like an affirmation of the life I’m finding myself caught up in—a life that I’m not sure I ever really chose. I think my spirit has often said yes to it, but like a butterfly caught in a wind funnel I’m thrilled and unnerved all at once. There is great beauty at the vertices and a sense of absolute rightness permeating throughout…. Yet the largeness of it gives one great pause. This is life on the wings of Purpose and Power and Kindness Himself.
I find in Ezra a God who takes people up on their willingness to be used for greatness.
A God who is pleased to do things that no one would ever expect
In people who should be His foe.
In Ezra I read of a God who stoops into our stomping grounds
And changes the rules of play,
Employing human frailty to make dreams become reality.
In Ezra I see a God who delights to surprise humanity with His attention to detail
And His prompt, never too-late solution for every predicament.
A God who loves to fashion unlikely joy.
Truly our God is a consuming fire, and the gravity of His kingdom is relentless.
To find yourself in His blueprint is to discover the longings of your heart.
And that alignment exists in the universe after all.
