In August I visited my friend Val and her mother, Cheryl. This post is dedicated to them.The thing about joy is that it is compatible with pain.
This past Thursday, the earthly army of believers lost a valiant warrior. Cheryl Mong, mother of my dear friend Val Schubert, went home to the arms of her Savior. She battled fiercely for the Kingdom, for her family, and finally against breast cancer. We surely feel the loss. I would like to dedicate this post to her. She lived a life worthy of the gospel. Her life testified to the fact that pain and joy can reside in the same tabernacle.
I am aware that a great many in the body are hurting, suffering. I have to suppress a cringe when I hear some good-natured Christian exclaim “it was so God!” when something turned out exactly right for her. Haven’t we all had seasons where things didn’t “work out” as we had planned? And can’t we say that God’s grace was upon us during it?
I went through just such a season of unraveling after our return from Honduras.
Often I felt that my brokenness was not welcome in church. In all fairness, our pastors teach correctly on brokenness and pain. We do not hear a prosperity gospel. Nonetheless, I perceived that “there was no room in the Inn” for my suffering and pain. I watched video stories touting larger than life images of lives given away, healed from bondage, stretched and molded. God had come through for them.
Yet I could not reconcile that with my experience of giving my life away and finding myself beaten up and mauled. Nobody wanted to see my story on the 40x40 video screen. I know other stories of heartbreak. I will share a few. A young man goes to Mexico to be a missionary and becomes so distraught with the suffering of children that he begins to starve himself to death surviving on one tomato a day. He loses his faith and to this day is an atheist. A missionary couple leaves medical practices and head to South America. They decide to return home because their children are not doing well. Thirty days later he walks away from his family and his faith. Another couple prays for years about adoption and decides God has called them to it. They invest over $25,000 to rescue a baby from an overseas orphanage. The government shuts down the adoption program for no good reason. They never see their money again or the baby God seemingly had called them to. It happens. People walk into situations/ministries that they believe God has called them into and the house falls in around them. Marriages over. Friendships destroyed. Children abused or abandoned. Ministries lost. Lives changed often appearing to be ruined.
Lest we feel like square pegs in round holes, look at Hebrews. Our forefathers “were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.” Hebrews 11:35-38.
Lewis Smedes said something like this: The true test of joy’s integrity is this: is it compatible with pain? Only the heart that hurts has a right to joy.
Sometimes pain invades our lives and takes our breath away. We don’t often talk about it at church, that life often doesn’t work out as planned - the elephant in the sanctuary. There are times when this Christian life does not look so great. In fact, life sucks. This colloquialism is biblically accurate.
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. John 16:33.
I just want to admit that often my life does not follow the four point plan I had. Whose does? Babies die. Father’s get colon cancer. Marriages fail. Children are sexually abused. Tribulation. Hell yeah, and how. When he says, “take heart!” It’s not take two verses and call me in the morning. It is this: take courage, be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. He has won!
My cheer comes from knowing that one day - like Cheryl - I will see Him face to face. He is far, far angrier about evil than I am. He will end it one day in a lake of burning sulfur. He will wipe every one of my tears away! He is my shield and my very great reward.
And yet it may happen in these the most desperate trials of our human existence that beyond any rational explanation, we may feel a nail-scarred hand clutching ours. The tragedy radically alters the direction of our lives, but in our vulnerability and defenselessness we experience the power of Jesus in His present risenness.
Apart from the risen Christ we live in a world without meaning, a world of shifting phenomena, a world of death, danger, and darkness. A world of inexplicable futility. Nothing is interconnected. Nothing is worth doing for nothing endures. It is all sound and fury with no ultimate significance.
The dark riddle of life is illuminated in Jesus; the meaning, purpose, and goal of everything that happens to us, and the way to make it all count can be learned only from the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Living in the awareness of the risen Christ is not a trivial pursuit for the bored and lonely or a defense mechanism enabling us to cope with the stress and sorrow of life. It is the key that unlocks the door to grasping the meaning of existence. All day and every day we are being reshaped into the image of Christ. Everything that happens to us is designed to this end. - Brennan Manning
09.18.2014 
I keep thinking about those empty baskets the crowd had with them in John chapter 6. The hungry crowd had gathered on a hill to listen to Jesus. Jesus asked his disciples to feed them. After pointing out they had no food and no money, Jesus divided 5 loaves and 2 fishes to feed thousands. We know the disciples collected 12 large baskets of leftovers. So I am assuming there were a lot more baskets that had held the food Jesus “made” to feed the crowd. All ate until they were full. 
