the rambling missionary

by erika haveman

The past few weeks I’ve really tried to focus on joy and bringing Jesus back to the centre.  It is only when Jesus is the focal point of our lives that we will have true joy and we’ll be compelled to live in trust, peace and comfort knowing Jesus has it all.  But what do we do when life really is falling apart?

I was having a conversation with young woman recently who, when I asked how her job is going, was suddenly pouring out to me the hardships her year had brought and how those hardships had effected her work.  As she spoke I couldn’t help but reflect on the series I’ve been writing and wondering how she would respond at my, possibly annoying, call to JOY.  For her to find joy is understandably a challenge in this season.  So I began to wonder how I could encourage my readers when they are going through really troubling or challenging seasons.  Winter happens.  There are seasons when God does feel silent and real shit goes down that is hard to push through.  What does this mean for us as followers of Jesus who are meant to keep Jesus at the centre?

If I learned anything in my adult years it’s that all of the answers I gave in Sunday School are the same, correct, resounding answers for all of life: Jesus, read your Bible, and pray.

I turn us again to the passage in Luke where Jesus is begging the hardship of going to the cross to be taken from Him.  The way He responded to the challenge set before Him was to go to the Father and pray.  We have to note, too, Jesus begged for the hardship to be gone, but His immediate next sentence was to submit to whatever God was doing.

When we go through hard times it is healthy and normal to feel it.  To know tears, to know grief.  Jesus was heartbroken when His friend Lazarus died (John 11).  He wept and allowed Himself to know the death of His friend.  He mourned the loss of someone He loved.  The hardship was real and felt.  Jesus’ reaction is our permission to know hardship, to grieve, to never rush the process of knowing loss.  However even within the heartbreak Jesus was releasing Himself to know He spoke truth: “I am the resurrection and the life.”  Even in the hard, cold, long, dark winter of loss Jesus spoke hope.

Hope doesn’t mean rushing through grief.  Hope means keeping your eyes on the only One who will bring any semblance of peace to our situation.

I know I’ve written about hope in the past, how terrifying it can be.  My conclusion in that post is the same as today, though: looking to Jesus is hope.  In hardship do we look to Jesus for hope?  Hope being the faith to believe that Jesus has your situations, cares for you, loves you, wants to be present with you.

The difference between begging for God’s presence in hardship or silence and asking, “God what can you do for me?” needs to be submission.  I’m not sure I’ve done an effective job in the past few weeks of clarifying this very crucial point.  Regardless of circumstance we need to live a life wholly submitted to God.  This won’t take away pain.  But it will allow for you to see life through the lens of Jesus’ love as opposed to your own overwhelming pain.

Don’t get me wrong – there is no simple fix for pain and suffering, for loss or death.  But shutting yourself down from Jesus or others is the farthest thing from discovering peace.  When unthinkable tragedies happen our first gut reaction is to ask God WHY and HOW He could allow something so terrible.  But He gets it.  He allowed Jesus to die.  God allowed this so that our hope could be in eternity.  When the unthinkable happens are we placing our hope back in Christ or blaming Him?  We all know blaming someone else for our pain doesn’t actually bring closure or healing.  Being angry at a situation won’t undo what happened.  I’m not saying you need to be happy about it, but you do need to remember that Jesus is greater and He knows how you feel.

Jesus is greater than your pain and He has felt it too.  Jesus is greater than your loss and He has felt it too.  Jesus is greater than your confusion and He has felt it too.  Jesus is greater than the silence and He has felt it too.

I get that it is sometimes so painful that it feels impossible to trust an invisible God.  But it is in exactly those moments that we must turn to God because He is the only one who can surpass all of our understanding with His completeness.  He is the answer, every time, and He is the good answer.  He hasn’t given us any less than all of Himself, and He asks us to do the same – in our pain and in our joy.