Many of you know one of the things that I have a heart for is grieving people. I am drawn to their pain and great need for hope. But just as fervently I am drawn to opportunity to teach others about that pain. The former passion comes from my own deep waters and the latter from a place of frustration.
Today my frustration mounted stirring me to share some important thoughts. I hope what I am doing is using my frustration to give birth to creativity. Enlightenment. Perspective. Writing for me is how I create. So I'll share...
A friend told me this morning how disturbed she was to hear another church-goer talking the most ugly words one can hear about a young person they both knew. The words would be ugly enough if this young person was living, able to be the receiver of such cruelty. But they are not. They are dead.
The grotesque words implied the parents had not done enough to ensure their child developed healthy. They implied the worst accusation a person can make, this family lost their child by their own actions or lack thereof.
Anger bubbled up in me when I heard this. How does someone say they follow Christ, the most compassionate being who ever lived, and miss His glaring example of love and compassion?
I think I partly know. For one, people think they're more in control then they are. If we think for a second that we can arrange our lives to be insulated from bad things than we live as fools. Jesus did not blame the blind man or his parents for his blindness. What He did instead was explain all suffering can have purpose. Suffering, imperfections, crisis, are permitted to give us an invitation to lean on and in and sometimes under the grace of God.
Secondly, people deflect pain away from themselves because it takes risk, becoming vulnerable and doing some self-examination. When we refuse to meet a broken-up human being in their nakedness it is because we are the problem not them and their brokenness. Being still in the presence of pain is very difficult for us prideful, self-reliant humans. We would rather work at fixing, disappearing or in this extreme case deflecting hate-filled lies.
People who dig their heels in to resist such a sacred place do not see Jesus as I do. Jesus showed up at the grave of Lazarus and simply wept. He made space to meet Mary and Martha in their pain and He, who would actually restore their brother did not rush them past the pain to the place of healing. That my friends says that meeting people in their pain matters. Something of great worth happens in that place. We would be wise to stop and take notice.
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