Depths of
experience; that’s what the abundant life
is about.
But we shrink from the deeper life
when the pain comes. We cannot have the heights if we are not prepared to go to
the depths. It’s just the way life is.
So I have learned – against my own
will initially – that there is a kind of life experienced at the depths that is
immensely valuable!
Even as we bear the pain of anguish
we may – in that depth – experience a depth that makes us bigger, better, more
compassionate, and able to be touched.
The underpinning truth of this, of
course, is the Presence of God provides the purpose of entering in. So actually
entering into the abyss is the very way to access the special revelation, and
Presence, of God.
An example... a poem, and then a
commentary on the poem, from my journal:
Oh wonderful pain,
A thoroughly salubrious lament,
It’s a funny sort of torment,
But, Contentment! Let it reign.
A thoroughly salubrious lament,
It’s a funny sort of torment,
But, Contentment! Let it reign.
In any old choosing of time,
A grief of experience is enjoyed,
It’s God’s Presence that’s employed,
Oh, how I love You, Divine!
A grief of experience is enjoyed,
It’s God’s Presence that’s employed,
Oh, how I love You, Divine!
Having just played music that elicits a serene, ethereal emotion almost
immediately, looking through visual records of the time when our infant son was
lost to us, there is the precious healing practice of inviting the Spirit’s revelation. There’s a hungering after his
Presence. Anywhere his Presence is it seems I’m willing to go, but shudder the
thought of his Presence departing for any reason. And God said to me as I
entered this healing of anguish, “Never shall I ever leave you, never ever will
I abandon you.” Walking through the experience of Nathanael Marcus, here and with
us physically, again, is such a gift that is immediately accessible any time I
want to remember him. What a wonder to partake of healing. I praise God!
This is so meaningful, others who are ailing as I have should know this
healing that comes from entering intentionally into, what I call ‘healing’,
anguish.
***
Hope transcends all experience of
anguish in the knowledge that God goes with us as we tread into healing by
entering into pain.
Such a healing can only come,
however, when we have debunked all rights to ourselves, which is a Christian’s
obedience to their Lord.
God knows the anguish is terrifying,
embittering, numbing, and angering. When we go into the anguish with our Lord,
though, there is a healing that can be accessed.
God blesses every act of courage to
grapple with the truth of our pain. And his is strength in the condition of our
weakness that will get us through.
© 2015 S. J. Wickham.
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