lessons from the grave, pt. II

A continuation of the last post, sharing lessons learned in my personal experiences the last few weeks/months that are resonating with several lessons and themes shared in Allender's book, The Healing Path. I feel his words capture it best so I'm sharing excerpts that have really spoken to me and connected with things God has been orchestrating in my heart lately.

PAINFUL REALITIES

"Most of us are spared such life-wrenching tragedy (referring to the story in the previous post,) but none of us escapes the heartache of living in a fallen world.

To live is to hurt.

We barely take our first breath and a wail is the first sound we utter. Seventy years later (if we’re lucky) our exit is with a moan or a whimper, a last breath reminiscent of the first cry.

Negative? A downer? Unnecessarily pessimistic? Surely life is not that bad for most people. Of course we know suffering will visit us sometimes, but we don’t want to think about it. What is the point in contemplating something that is out of our control? If we could prevent it, then we might briefly consider our stance toward suffering. But why bother when God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45)? We’re all going to get our share of joy and sorrow, so let’s just get on with our lives and hope for the best.

The problem with this position is that once the inevitable pain comes, it is too late to consider how we will allow ourselves to be shaped by it.

If we fail to anticipate thoughtfully how we will respond to the harm of living in a fallen world, the pain may be for naught.

It will either numb or destroy us rather than refine and even bless us. Suffering need not destroy the heart; it has the potential to lead to life.

But few people I know suffer deeply and profit. Instead, pain is seldom expected nor embraced when it comes. It is often denied or swept under the spiritual rug of “God’s sovereignty.” The apostle Paul tells us that as we “groan inwardly,” we “wait eagerly” for our final redemption (Romans 8:23). But few of us enter the tragedy of living in a fallen world and simultaneously struggle with God until our hearts bleed with hope. We either give into pain with a hopeless cynicism, or we settle for an artificial solution that insists that things really aren’t too bad and we need not muck around in the “negatives” of life.

God’s perspective on suffering is very different.

He invites us on a healing journey through the valleys and over the cliffs of an evil world, but we often miss our on his redemptive path. Too many of us suffer for naught.

For the past fifteen years, I have spent countless hours with men and women who have suffered the ravages of childhood sexual abuse. In 1988 my book The Wounded Heart detailed the harm such abuse wreaks upon the soul and how it eats at the core of what makes human beings in God’s image: our capacity for faith, hope, and love. A decade later, sexual abuse continues to ravage lives even in a culture that has spent unprecedented time and energy talking about the subject. Cast the net even wider, and it becomes clear that many of us are carrying deep hurts simply because human beings inflict harm on each other, whether intentionally or unintentionally, provoked or unprovoked.

Ten years and far more reflection on these issues have made clearer to me what the evil in the world is doing to harm all of our hearts and darken our love for God and others. No matter how we acquired our wounds, we all need the good news of the healing power of redemption: Evil meant our suffering for our destruction, but God meant it for our good.

Healing in this life is not the resolution of our past; it is the use of our past to draw us into deeper relationship with God and his purposes for our lives. We need a new understanding of how to deal with past hurts, one that acknowledges the damage to the human spirit while charting a path toward the abundant life God promises."

- Dan Allender, The Healing Path

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I couldn't agree more with these statements. It is often the experiences we feel will crush us that have the power to free us. Often the things we feel will kill us that hold the potential to lead us to true life.