Suggested listening: O The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus, https://youtu.be/3B605gdrqmk?is=dqfHsp9VYFAdzDdC
“Deep and wide, deep and wide
There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide…”
~Sidney E. Cox~
“The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer
because of your love,
the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper.”
~Henri Nouwen, p. 59~
In C.S. Lewis’s book Perelandra, Ransom goes head-to-head with the tempter as he contends for the protection of an unfallen planet. An ordinary human being, Ransom finds himself overwhelmed as the characters who represent Adam and Eve assume their thrones after the near catastrophic deception that Ransom helped to prevent. He had suffered, as well, and he was in awe, having suffered himself. The tempter in our world also battles us in our mind and our bodies also succumb to the suffering of a broken and bent world.
Inasmuch as you have suffered has Christ met you in those deep places.
“Be comforted, small one, in your smallness.
He [God] lays no merit on you.
Receive and be glad.
Have no fear, lest your shoulders be bearing this world.
Look! It is beneath your head and carries you.”[1]
There is space at the table for you in your present pain. Jesus does not monopolize us, nor does he gain capital by fulfilling His purpose on earth through us. He was not tempted by feelings of power, and thoughts of wealth did not preoccupy His mind. Satan tempted Him with these things in Matthew 4 during His exile in the wilderness, and He applied scripture to the temptation.
Is it possible that even in grief, I can miss the wonder of what God is trying to convey to me? Some of you don’t have to imagine enduring the suffering of the loss of a child or a a spouse because you are living with that grief. While Grief is a constant companion for those of us who have lost, it can be a gift to help us navigate to a Promised Land. Grief is part of a broken world’s story, so how do we walk with that grief without staying in the land of exile of our grief? In John 20:15, Mary Magdalene was so overcome by her grief of Jesus’ death, that it prevented her from recognizing Him in His risen form.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you’re looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir … tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
The answer to her grief wasn’t at the tomb.
He calls us out from the depths of our tombs, much as he called Lazarus out from the depth of his tomb, but not before Jesus wept. He weeps for you while you are in the depths of that sorrow, while you are wrestling with the why’s and the tension that exists with your belief in a God who could have spared the shattered pieces?
Jesus wept.
Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?
~John 11:35-37~
He called Lazarus out from the depths of the decay, smells and grave clothes clinging to him. And the One who spoke worlds into being “delights in speaking new worlds of being into our very souls, affirming…those very parts of ourselves that have not been called forth.”[2]
Henri Nouwen speaks of grief like a plow, cultivating the soil deep in our hearts so that seeds of future fruit can take root. As we think of the painful experiences in our lives, we would do better to not chase down their ghosts with the palmar grasp reflex of a fetus; rather, it is with the unclenched release of worship we can offer our sacrifice. It truly becomes a sacrifice when I offer it out of the pain of that circumstance, that loss, that disappointment, that grief. In our cries of distress, we can be angry, we can be grieved, we can feel deeply. But let us also crave that deep intimacy with a Father who wants to match that profound depth of our grief with the matchless and unsearchable resources of God’s love and comfort. He is our lifeline when we our emotions are drowning us; He still hears us in that abyss.
And when we discover the emptiness of the depth of our tombs, may we hear in that echo-chamber of our grief the words of Isaiah 58:11, “I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—firm muscles, strong bones. You’ll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry,” (MSG).
“The wider the community of your heart,
the wider the community around you.
Thus the pain of rejection, absence, and death can become fruitful.
Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart
will be broken more and more,
but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear.”
~Henri Nouwen~
“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;
All your waves and breakers have swept over me.”
Psalm 42:7
“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,
may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people,
to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.
~Ephesians 3:17-18~
[1] C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Collier, 1962), p. 197.
[2] Leanne Payne, The Healing Presence (Grand Rapids, MI: Hamewith Books, 2005), p.61.
