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| God's Cycle of Comfort |
One of the cool things I noticed about this cycle, now that I've drawn it counter-clockwise, is that it is in the shape of a "G". Now when you see the "G" in "God", it can remind of you of His cycle of comfort.
The problem though is that sometimes we get the impression that God is indifferent to our pain. We get this picture of God as being a calloused, personal fitness trainer, or maybe even a drill seargent, standing by our side as we strain at the weights shouting out "No pain! No gain!", "Come on! Is that all you've got?", and "My eighty-year-old grandmama can lift more than that!" And though I try and paint a somewhat comical picture of the situation, the reality is that life's pains run deep and wide.
Women are raped. Children are abused. People starve. Families lose everything to tornadoes, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes. Sons and daughters die before parents, with some never making it out of the womb alive. A worker gets laid off. A spouse's love has grown cold. A Mom and Dad get divorced. With tears in our eyes we lift our faces to the heavens, raise clinched fists to the sky and cry out "God, do you even care???"
The best way I know to answer that question is to look at Jesus. Jesus Himself said "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9) Seeing Jesus and His feelings, His reactions to our plights, will let us know if God cares or if God is cold-hearted.
Consider this story from John 11, as translated in the New International Version:
Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, 7 and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
8 “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”
9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. 10 It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”
11 After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”
12 His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
16 Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, 19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
28 After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” 29 When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.
32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
35 Jesus wept.
36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
While there is a lot I would love to talk about in this story, the main thing in light of our discussion here is Jesus' reaction to the weeping of Mary and those with her. In the shortest yet one of the most profound verses in the Bible, John tells us that Jesus wept.
It makes no sense. Jesus knew from the outset that He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. He could have easily said "Calm down, people. I've got everything under control. You'll have Lazarus back in just a few minutes here," or anything else to that effect.
But instead of telling people to get over their pain Jesus chose to feel our pain. He chose to weep. Jesus let Himself feel the pain of losing someone you love, the pain of knowing that you will never live another day on this earth hearing the sound of their voice, seeing the smile on their face, feeling the comfort of their presence. Jesus felt it all, everything we feel, and He was deeply moved by it.
My son plays little league football. A few weeks ago I took him to his game. Of course being a parent you have to get there an hour or more before kick-off. While I was waiting for my son's game to start I walked over and sat in the stands by the field where I thought he was going to play and watched a game already in progress.
It was one of those games where one team was just clearly no match for the other. The winning team was observedly bigger, stronger, and faster. It was no surprise then when one of the boys on the losing team lay in agony at the end of one of the plays. The coaches ran out. The refs walked over. It wasn't long before the words "broken arm" made their way from the field, to the sideline, to the stands where I was sitting.
I had no idea who the boy was, yet seeing him there and hearing what had happened, I felt a stirring within me. A sadness came over me. My eyes began to moisten. An emotional pain gripped me as I looked on this poor youngster and thought of what had happened to him.
Now if that is how I felt for a boy I never met, whose face and arm I couldn't even see, how much more than did God, who formed that child in the womb, who knows the very number of hairs on that boy's head, who most certainly knows his complete name and who sees that kid as one of His own sons, how much more than did He feel pain for that tiny football player?
If I had been the boy, and if God Himself had been there and had come running over to me, I would fully expect, not to see some emotionless, hardened face, but to see the face of a loving father with tears streaming down. I would fully expect, not to hear the voice of an annoyed parent saying "Oh, get over it, son. Pain is good for you!", but to hear a tender voice saying "It's going to be okay, son. Daddy's with you." The reason I expect that is because that is what I see in Jesus.
I know we get upset with God. I know we get mad at Him for allowing the pain in the first place. For example, some may very well say "Well, if God loved that football player, He would never let His arm get broken in the first place!"
Look. While I know some of the reasons that God allows us to experience pain in this life, I freely confess to you that I don't know all of them. I don't know why sometimes God spares us and sometimes He doesn't. What I do know is this: my choice is to serve a God who chooses to weep when I weep, or to serve a devil who chooses to take joy in my weeping. I choose the God of Jesus Christ. I hope you do too.
Thank you for reading!!!
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