“All things work together for good”
“God has a plan”
“They’re in a better place”
And on and on it goes. Things Christians say to those upon whom tragedy and suffering descends.
They — we, because I do it too — often mean well. But too often we say things simply because we don’t know how to feel in or step into a space of suffering. All our tendencies are towards “do not suffer”. We want to get out, and get them out, as fast as possible.
But too many times, fast is not possible. Neither is slow. One has no option but to stand still. One has no recourse but to endure the unspoken, unfathomable, seemingly unlimited pain. Therefore, for those wounded by tragedy and suffering, movement is not an option. And Christians need to learn not only to be still and know that God is God, but also to be still with God there in the stillness. In the heaviness and motionlessness of grief and mourning.
This past Sunday I was driving to my daughter’s wedding. To give her away, as well as to perform her ceremony. I had a tremendous amount of joy in my heart. But also a tremendous amount of sorrow, because I had just heard the news of a Pastor friend who tragically lost his 6 year old daughter. A daughter getting married, a daughter never to be married. How was I to feel? It was strange to carry within me two very distinct sets of emotions and thoughts and desires. I rejoiced over and with my daughter and, yet, I grieved over and for my friend.
How do we know Jesus was angry and sad at the passing of His beloved friend Lazarus? Because He said so? Because He showed so and wept. Tragedy and suffering are things not meant to be. And while God can use things not meant to be, that’s not the same as saying they are meant to be for God’s purposes. But did Jesus know or have hope God would resurrect Lazarus? Jesus declared He was the resurrection and the life BEFORE He wept. Being the resurrection did not prevent him from enduring the pain and sting of death.
How does Jesus feel all at the same time? How does Jesus carry sadness and anger at the very same time as joy and hope? I don’t know how, but I know that He can. I know that He does. Pascal once wrote: “I do not admire the excess of a virtue like courage unless I see at the same time an excess of the opposite virtue, as in…extreme courage and extreme kindness. Otherwise it is not rising to the heights but falling down. We show greatness, not by being at one extreme, but by touching both at once and filling all the space in between.”
Jesus both rejoices and mourns. Jesus is the Lion AND the Lamb, filling all the space between. C.S. Lewis called Jesus “the Avalanche AND the Rose”. Jesus is the crucified AND resurrected savior. To live in Christ is to live in the “AND”. To live the Christ-life is to grow in the “BETWEEN”. Yes, somehow, Jesus filled and fills all the space between our broken human condition and our being exalted with Him in the heavens; between the unbearable suffering in our daily lives and the unlimited power of His resurrected life.
Christians do not honor Christ well when they minimize or trivialize suffering and tragedy. We honor Christ well when we recognize that He came into a suffering, broken and tragic world being who He was — the Beginning and the End. He didn’t minimize suffering and tragedy, He didn’t trivialize it. He came to it. He was born into it. He took it upon himself. He walked through it. He carried the weight of it. He suffered and died under it. And He did so, not so that it would be minimized or trivialized in our own lives, but so that coming face to face with it, He might fully know and experience and sympathize with us in our condition. That somehow, being The End, He might grieve to the full as both God and man. Yet, because He is The End, having grieved to the full, He also rejoices to perfection, to completion, to the fullest extent possible as both God and man.
From our side, we can know in part what He suffered and endured, but never in full. From His side, He knows in full what we suffer, never just in part. For Christians, therefore, in Christ there is always a sure and certain hope for the future, an unspeakable joy full of glory from the future. A new world in which He will wipe away every tear. A day in which there will no longer be any suffering, tragedy, sickness, pain or death. A city in which all that is sad will come untrue…
But until that day we suffer suffering in ways and at times that don’t make any sense to us, and never will.
So, Elim Grace, for the sake of those who suffer, when such times descend, remember that silence and tears can speak more deeply than words and Bible verses. Not because Bible verses are untrue, but because the truth of God’s Word living in our hearts can also, and sometimes more so, be spoken through a long embrace and/or bitter weeping.