Re (3): Mystery of Marriage

You want to know the truth, though? I find that often I don't know what to do with myself when things are going too smoothly. Sometimes I almost feel like it's the dirty joke of the universe. Not ultimately, of course, but I think we all have our moments of feeling like life itself even is almost unreal—a certain surrealism to it—I certainly do, at the least.

I once read a simple thought in Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot that has stuck with me. Specifically, she was referring to her days of loneliness and the host of related emotions that went along with her five year wait for her soon-to-be first husband Jim. (He was eventually killed by natives while obediently serving on the mission field.) She said that whenever she felt these painful feelings, she would offer them up to God—that these feelings were often the ONLY thing that she had to offer Him. For whatever reason, that simple statement has resounded in my mind ever since and whenever I feel the painful experiences of life, I know that I have something to offer to God.

Now I certainly would not describe myself as a masochist, but I would say that whenever I go for very long without at least having some small trifle to offer back to the Lord, I get feeling a little antsy and a little nervous. Perhaps this fact demonstrates my own lack of maturity, but I do believe that it is often in those painful moments when we grow the most.

Sometimes, I think, the growth occurs from the solace He offers. I am reminded of a verse from the hymn "It's Just Like His Great Love":

When sorrow's clouds o'ertake me
And break upon my head,
When life seems worse than useless,
And earthly hopes are dead,
I take my grief to Jesus then,
Nor do I go in vain,
For heav'nly hope He gives,
That cheers like sunshine after rain.

Surely, if you have traveled with the Lord for any length of time, you understand the bittersweet release of surrendering the pain and sorrow of life up to Him and experiencing the peace and the saddened joy that go along with it; you know how it feels to swim upstream alone and yet have a quiet assurance that the path (or more precisely the Person) you have chosen is by far the best. I am sure that you know what it feels like to suffer in silence, yet feel the presence of the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

I think that pain and sorrow comes to us all—whether we place our trust in Christ or whether we do not. The question, I suppose, is how we will deal with our pain. Will we offer it up to God as a living sacrifice and remain trustful and obedient? Or will we have to die the slower and more painful way, wrestling with our grubby fingers until they finally release that which they never could hold in the first place? In my case, I fear, the latter is often the way that I go: screaming and kicking, but—thanks be to the grace of God—dying no less. I think part of the problem is that we don't like to feel powerless: we would like so badly to have some control over our own destiny that we will cling to the illusion that we do at the expense of living fully in the truth. In my better moments, I am content to rest in Christ, come whatever storms may. In my worst, I HATE the fact that I cannot so much as add another hair to my head or another day to my life by all my worry. I seem to believe in my irrationality, that if I stew long enough and loud enough, the universe will somehow rearrange around all my wants and wishes and I will find that elusive happiness I have convinced myself resides just beyond the reach of my grasping fingers: in fact, I fancy the tips of my fingers have even brushed up against it. I believe you said it best, if not in quite so many words: I am a typical American.

God bless,
Eric

It's Just Like His Great Love