You Can Have It All
Sorrow: Day 13 of 39 Days
Man of sorrows what a name
for the Son of God, who came.
Phillip Bliss
I may not know you, but I know something about you. You’ve learned so much more about life through failure, suffering and pain than you have through pleasure and success. Your sorrow is intimacy and the people all around you, with smiles and small talk, add nothing to the transcendence of life. Sorrow is the gift no one prays to receive. And yet when sorrow comes it brings clarity, intimacy and a desire to change.
You’re not the only one that grieves the evanescence of our time on this blue marble. Jesus grieved, wept, and lamented as well. He wept at the tomb of a friend. He mourned a city lost in the crippling legalism of alien liturgy and legalistic isolation.
When I look at my life, I, too, grieve. I grieve the obsessions I embraced that foolishly looked like safety and humility, when in fact they only gave birth to deeper dangers and pride.
Like you, Jesus loved someone with no reciprocation.
Like you, Jesus saw promises and covenants dispatched in a moment.
Like you, Jesus felt the shame of false accusation.
He showed us how to rise above the arrow-paths of a thousand earthly sorrows.
“Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling the secret of who you are, but more often than not of the mystery of where you have come from and are summoning you to where you should go next.”
Frederick Buechner
Reflect
Take a moment to identify the things for which you mourn.
Understanding Sorrow
When we grieve over the right things we find a fairer day ahead. The trick is to be able to bury the dead things that must be buried and call upon God to do what only He can do with the rest. We mourn but we do not sorrow as those who have no hope.
Lord, save me from the kind of sorrow that leads to despair and draw me to the sorrow that leads to forgiveness and dancing.
Pearl of Great Price
Forgiveness
“He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.” – George Herbert
How important is it to forgive? Eternally important.
The past is consuming to the person who doesn’t forgive.
We become stuck.
We fantasize vindication.
We look at relationships surrounding the offense in a possessive manner.
We cling to bitterness as our beverage of choice.
We talk about it to people who have no business hearing of it.
We dream going back, doing things differently, saying something more damaging, and avoiding the offense.
My unwillingness to love and forgive makes life about me and NOT the Incarnation of Jesus who longs to abide in me. God silences His voice because He sees only one thing in the past: The Cross-the ultimate iconoclast of unforgiveness.
Prayer:
Lord, when You were on trial, You would not speak to save Your life. Teach me the art of trust and forgiveness even when I am in the midst of wrongs done to me. Teach me to speak grace and truth, not so much in a desire to be seen as right, but rather to humbly participate in the ministry of reconciliation.
The One who created life became obedient unto death.
When we forgive we forfeit our miseries and choose to live in the presence. We no longer have the need to marinade in the poison of nurtured malice. We lose our self-important disappointments. We embrace everything that Jesus, on the cross, suffered to apprehend.
Reflect
Who have you harmed?
Who has harmed you?
Are you willing to forgive today?
Understanding Forgiveness
Choosing not to forgive is choosing to live backwards. Forgiveness frees up the energy it takes to bear the burden of anger indefinitely. Because God has forgiven all our sins, we should not withhold forgiveness from others.