sharing suffering

How ironic it seems that one day You are showing me the absence of "sadness" within You and then the next, You turn me around and show me the suffering You want me to share.

May 8th, 2012 

As I herded the massive display of balloons into the elevator, another passenger smiled and asked which floor.

"Ten, please" I replied.

These were going to a member of the Sheriff's department.  Co-workers and friends contributed to the collection of balloons since flowers weren't allowed in this particular hospital unit.  And I was performing my daily task of delivery.  When the elevator stopped and the doors parted, I ushered my entourage through the opening and into the hallway.  Turning to the left I saw the sign indicating the room number where this patient was staying.  Then I saw it.  "Welcome to the Oncology Unit" in big, bold letters right before my eyes.  My heart drooped as I walked forward and knocked softly on the door to #1006.

"Delivery for Alex" I said softly.

"Come on in." the voice answered.

I pushed the door quietly open and saw a Doctor administering medication.  The patient was in his late twenties or early thirties; a very strong and muscular, handsome man.  But he appeared in a daze as he looked my way.  So the Doctor explained to him as he took the balloons from me.

"Some of your friends wanted to send you flowers but we don't allow them on this floor, so they sent these balloons."

Alex mumbled acknowledgement and turned toward the window as I left quietly thanking the Doctor.  

This encounter lasted 2 minutes; maybe 3; but it gripped my heart with a vise as tears welled up.  I returned to the elevator as a remote robot while I searched my heart for how and what to do with this scene.  Somehow I made my way back to my vehicle and as I turned the key I looked up to heaven and pleaded.
"Jesus!  You made healing available to us all.  I don't know if this is allowed, but I Appropriate Healing on behalf of Alex!  And I ask that healing angels surround him and whatever it takes for him to be healed come to him now, in Jesus name!"
And now, my Lord, you have placed this young man, Alex, into my heart in such a way that I cannot turn away.  I may never see him again.  I may never know what happens to him.  But I carry him.
My heart hurts because of his presence there.  I weep for him.  I ache for him.  I hope for him.  I long for his release from this cruel, evil beast.

Again, it seems amazingly ironic that You show me how no sadness lives inside of you and then You share with me the suffering.  My mind is in a quandary over this seemingly contradictory aspect of You.  Help me to understand.

Much later in the day as I bumbled through my other deliveries, I heard Him.  His small, quiet, still voice; so peaceful and serene.  "You will know someday, how sharing his suffering changed things."

The Love Vine

Love; the sweetness, the wholeness of all; see how it expands and fills up.  This expansion and filling is Growth.  Then comes the Bearing of Fruit, or the producing.  This is how the Kingdom takes over the world, our minds, our thoughts, our emotions, our lives - everything.  This "whole love" growing and filling and producing.  See it as you see a vine, first growing roots and when they are established then the stems begin to grow and leaves grow until the vine fills the ground around it for a large area.  Then it bears the fruit, veggies, flowers etc.  This is what Love does to evil surrounding us in the world.  It builds and grows the roots inside of us until it is firmly established and won't be moved.  This action takes time and takes up a lot of area underground in our hearts and minds.  Once it is established then the outward vine begins to grow, spreading out gradually all around us, creeping into every nook and cranny of every fixture and every object.  It produces the leaves, sometimes big and shady which cover the objects and fixtures.  These objects may be old and weathered and ugly.  They may represent the ugliness around us in this life; sometimes they are things in our environment at work or at home.  Whatever they are is "embraced" by the vine of Love and "enclosed" by it - "wrapped" in it and covered by the leaves until it is hard to find that object.  It actually becomes concealed IN and UNDER the vine "Love".  If this process is allowed to continue for a great period of time, that item will eventually break apart and begin to disintegrate with the slow, invading pressure of the vine.  If we equate this as bad habits or bad environment we can see how those things of evil don't disappear with Love, but are "covered" by it and then "broken down" by it.  Eventually the object turns into dust and becomes part of the soil. 
In the growing and spreading out process, the fruit and flowers come.  But they are on top.  They are displayed on the "outside" rather than hidden under the leaves.  When they arrive, they are "offered" to the passers-by freely for the picking and enjoyment of others.  And the fruit carries the seed for reproduction.  But the fruit is almost the "after-thought" and not the primary purpose.  And yet it is essential for life.  However the main intent of the vine seems to be the covering of the ground and expansion for as far as it is not constrained.  It will spread and grow and expand as far as it is given the nutrients from the roots.  This seems to be its primary goal - to spread and expand; covering over everything in it's path until all that is seen is the Love.  Nothing else is visible.  An ugly object may still exist beneath the leaves but only the Vine leaves are seen while that object is slowly dismantled and dissolved.
Let the Vine grow.  Remove constraints and give it wide berth to cover and spread out everywhere in sight.  The wider the area, the more plentiful the fruit.

"sadness" is not a holy emotion

Why do we think that sadness can be such a "holy" emotion?  Because we haven't been told otherwise.  But here's the real scoop.  Sadness is not a characteristic of Father God.  He is Love and Joy and Peace.  There is not one moment of sadness IN Him.  And when we are IN Him, we cannot live in sadness.
Really?  That boggled my mind when He first told me.
Then He went farther and explained that ALL love, and ALL joy and ALL peace come from Him.  There is no love or joy or peace that come from the dark world.  None.

Then He went even farther.  I have a choice.  I can choose what I feel.  I am not subject to whims of emotions flitting through my mind and my heart - unless I just stand by and LET THEM.  But, if I stand up and REJECT the ones that come from the dark world, then they have to leave me alone.  They might not go immediately because I might not be convinced that I CAN reject them.  But if I perform this act from sheer obedience to what He told me; then I will begin to see it happen.  And the more it happens the more I will do it.
That world of "no more tears" is right here and right now.  It isn't somewhere in the future after Jesus returns.  He already came.  He already lives right here in my heart.  His power and love and joy are already seated inside me.  The only difference is my choice - activating it.  I have to make this choice and I have to back up that choice with my words.  Speaking it out loud tells the angels and the world of darkness where I stand.
Wow!  It works.

Crashing waves

Oh, how to make the waves stop crashing and how to extract ourselves from the splashing.  We all get wet.  No one is spared.  And no one can jump ship and run.  Because no matter how far you run and how beautiful the picture of your past you paint; truth is always revealed.  Shame is always found.

Psalms 107:26-29 "Those aboard mount up to the heavens, they go down again to the deeps; their courage melts away because of their plight. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and are at their wits end all their wisdom has come to nothing. Then they cry to the Lord in their trouble, and He brings them out of their distresses.  He hushes the storm to a calm and to a gentle whisper, so that the waves of the sea are still.

the "Facts" we see and hear

Basking in the sunshine, a robin came and sat nearby me.  He (she?) chirped periodically.  So I was peacefully enjoying this display of spring.  Then he moved.  He lowered his head and took 2 steps backward and sat down.  As I watched him, he opened his beak barely and I heard a small chirp of a different pitch coming from far to my right.  At first I thought he was mime-ing the chirping of another bird, which seemed amazingly funny and I started to laugh.  But as I watched longer, he opened his beak wider and wider and the chirping to my right became louder and louder.  Eventually, my quick mind realized that something about his change of position was causing his chirp to echo off a far wall and not come down to me directly from him.  It began to seem more and more weird.
So, when something seems weird to me, I immediately think of God.  (ha! not that I think God is weird, but that He makes things so much different than we expect sometimes).  And I asked Him if He was trying to tell me something in this weird little scene.
Immediately it came to me.  We assess all of life based on our 5 senses; with most predominance on sight and sound.  We struggle with Faith because it seems foreign to those senses, especially sight and sound.  However, as this bird just displayed, how much faith we are placing in sight and sound; when facts are not always what we see or hear at all.  How many games or pictures or diagrams have caused us to laugh when they turn out to be something completely different than we first saw or heard?  And we take it for granted that there are optical illusions, but think about it very seldom.  But rather we place ALL of our trust on those 2 senses so completely and will even get into arguments as a result.
We limit God to what we can understand with those senses, when in fact He is the one who created them and can manipulate them.  For instance, a war was won in the Old Testament because God caused the enemy to "hear" the sound of a great, massive army coming towards them.  So they ran away.  The war was won because they ran away.
We go to God and ask for the solution to a situation, but at the same time while we are praying, we are envisioning God's response within the confined parameters of our own senses.  We are limiting Him.
I read something recently about taking God out of the box.  And the answers were amazing in themselves.  But it came down to this.  We can't think any differently through our own limitations.  Our ability to take God out of the box can only come from us turning to Him to expand our thinking.  If only He knows the extent that He is capable, then only He can comprehend that thought, and only He can share that kind of thinking with us.  We can't concieve of it on our own.
So it's a matter of, "Ask and you shall recieve".