Dear All of Us,
This is going to hurt.
Please don't run away.
Please tuff it out.
We live our spiritual lives
in two atmospheres -
easy and hard,
fair and foul,
light and dark,
pleasant and painful.
understanding and clueless,
creative and chaotic,
potential and impotence
ecstasy and exasperation.
One way or many it's
usually positive or negative.
Sometimes - a lotta times -
it's a maddening mix of both.
And while we're at it,
why positive AND negative
in the first place?
How can God -
Love Itself
allow pain and suffering?
In short,
and we sure hope it is,
Why
HURT
as persons,
as a people,
as a planet?
Our focus here
is not how to deal
with it, but rather
Why
HURT
Consider two wonderful
young men I care about.
Let's make it
Bob and Bill.
I've know Bob
since he was a boy -
delightful, engaging,
gifted and energetic.
Now a physician,
he's in his late 20's.
I met Bill when one
of my favorite
young adults at church
started dating him.
I was blessed
to eventually marry them.
Bill has a mind wide and deep
paired with remarkable Soul Savvy.
He's now in his late 30's.
Both Bob and Bill suffer
constant and terrible pain.
They have doctored
with the best.
None can name nor cure.
Why
HURT
Why rape, murder, defrauding,
failed relationships,
attacks on the Common Good,
white nationalism,
economic and social domination
of the many by the few,
reality denying corruption of truth,
drought, flood, depletion of
nature's life giving bounty?
Why disease and
often painful death?
Why corrupt, inept leaders
in church, commerce, governance,
who cause so much
pain and suffering,
and, and, and AND!!??
Why
HURT
This is all front
and center for me.
The last month plus
has meant more emotiomal,
psychic and physical pain
for my wife and me
than either of us
has endured
in many a year.
Why
HURT
If you have a solution
to all the above,
immediately
get yourself on over
to those feuding cousins,
CNN and FOX,
and let the world know.
Of course we all know
we don't know
Why
HURT
That's part of our
painful plight here.
Actually, we just
don't know
the why and how
at either expanse of
our spiritual experience -
Ineffable Good
all the way to
its painful absence.
BUT what we can't explain
we sure do "experience,"
be it mystical ecstasy
to wrenching pain.
We experience way more
than we can fathom:
the mystery of God's
limitless love and goodness
to hideous evil and disruption.
Though, not an answer
nor relief, there is
a bit of an insight into
Why
HURT
Starting with The First Folks,
so many of us since have misused
the freedom to love
God and all God's Creation,
to live harmonized with
Truth and Reality.
We have opted to play god,
perverted people and place
for our own singular satisfaction.
That ranges from lies
to ravishing earth
and polluting air,
to genocide and slavery,
to forcing economic
and social systems that
concentrate excessive
wealth and power
for the few while
impoverishing the many.
The Common Good is trashed.
We have thrown sand into
the gears of nature and society.
All kinds of good
are knocked off kilter,
colliding in painful chaos.
That's a sad peek
into a bit of the genealogy
of pain and suffering, of
Why
HURT
Some say chaos is a dynamic
of creation itself,
that misfires force refocus,
correct course,
generating evolution
forward and fuller.
Honestly I don't know enough
about all that to more than
note it as maybe of
Why
HURT
What we do know is that
we're in the mix,
and if we are humble enough
to see it, that it will all
eventually work to wonder.
WE SEE
that we are created
in the image and
very likeness of God.
God is our DNA.
We are woven into
Infinite Goodness,
based on
Bedrock Reality.
We get knocked down,
but we don't to go down
for the count.
Besides, God's got
so much for us to do
(Genesis 1:26-31)
It doesn't explain how, but
it does position assurance.
WE SEE
that Jesus is God Love Incarnate.
He didn't duck sin and evil,
pain and suffering.
He took them on.
He suffered them through to
Good.
He absorbed them and
transformed their unrealness
into the Real, into
The Love That Is God.
WE SEE
that some how or other
the negative is the positive
turned round wrong
and it makes for
HURT
Redemption is
a correcting turn around,
a re-creation.
God's creative energy,
twisted wrong by evil,
is righted.
Participating in
this salvation,
this re-creation,
means
HURT
It's like setting
a broken arm.
It hurts and it heals.
"Do you not know
that all of us who
have been baptized
into Christ Jesus
have been baptized
into his death?
Therefore we have
been buried with him
through baptism
into death,
so that as Christ was
raised from the dead
through the glory
of the Father,
so we too might walk
in newness of life.
For if we have become
united with him
in the likeness of his death,
certainly we shall also be
in the likeness
of his resurrection..."
(Romans 6: 3-5)
We're in on the deal.
It's trans- temporal.
Immersed in Christ
in our time
in our place
in our way,
we are so one that
we experience
in him and with him
The Pascal Mystery.
We suffer the death of evil,
pushing through in God Love
to the freedom of
Life Right and Resurrection.
The historical event
was then and there.
The phenomenon
and our participation
is here and now.
Paul puts it in sharp focus.
"I am now rejoicing
in my suffering
for your sake,
and in my flesh
I am completing
what is lacking
in Christ's affliction
for the sake of his body,
that is, the church."
(Colossians 1:24)
WE SEE
There will be a cosmic reset:
"Then I saw a new heaven
and a new earth;...
And I heard a loud voice
from the throne, saying,
'Behold the tabernacle of God
is among men,
and he shall dwell among them,
and they shall be his people,
and God Himself
will be among them,
and He will wipe away
every tear from their eyes;
and there will no longer
be any death;
there will no longer be
any mourning, or crying,
or pain; the first things
have passed away.'
And He who
sits on the throne said,
'Behold I am making
all things new...."
(Revelation 21: 1- 5)
We can't figure hurt to it's elimination.
We simply have to go through it.
We die as we come alive.
We do that together.
We companion and support all in the mix -
people,
peoples,
places.
Why
HURT
Really don't know.
Do know for all the
Hurt
there is
HOPE
the assurance of
resurrection,
re-creation,
Life Right,
a new heaven and a new earth,
that one day no more pain,
as all is made new.
Please, please join me in
holding Bob and Bill in
God's Redeeming Love
as they so hurt.
Thanks for sticking with all this.
Glad you didn't run away.
Much of what we share here
each week is a lot easier
to take than this.
But then, we live
our spiritual lives
in two atmospheres,
easy and hard,
comprehended and baffling,
pleasant and painful.
Gotta deal with all of iit.
John Frank
frankly speaking
spirituality for the street
jjohnfrankshares@blogspot.com
