Finding God. L. Crabb
We are passionately determined to make our lives less painful, and we will do whatever it takes to reach this goal in a disappointing, sometimes pleasurable, and maddeningly uncertain world.
Oh, we see this every day. In the news, in our emails, our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and whatever other social communications we use. Many people decry their own trials, seemingly living a perfect, painless life...while under the surface is a gaping hole filled with pain, rage, terror and practically any negative descriptive word imaginable. We fill these in a variety of ways: more social activities, endless parties, endless Bible studies, endless TV/Movie watching, endless drinking, drugs, sex and/or sexual perversions....anything that blocks the pain that we are endlessly alone.
When we only think on the fact that we are alone, that no one really gets us, no one understands the pain, our wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/best friend/other family member is unkind, unsupporting, un-whatever, we will never escape that pain.
While I agree that it is possible to feel that pain and NOT be mad at God, sometimes that pain is because we are angry at God for allowing us this unnatural world---forgetting the fact that most of the time, without constant discipline in striving for a relationship with God, we prefer to be our own gods. Gods that ought to be "worshipped" by everything and everyone around us.
On the otherside, not feeling angry at God for the pain...comes bewilderment that He would allow this pain, and the unconscious notion of being a god that ought to have every whim met.
Yes, there are terrible things that do hurt---and they should! They are sometimes warning signs that people or situations are not safe to be around or in, respectively, or diseases that need treatments...but we made the choice to be there in many cases, or someone else made the choice for us to be there, or generations of sin made for the disease ravaging the body.
Yet those scars, red, angry and throbbing though they may be, can be healed with such an amazing salve. If we are willing to release our anger, willing to release our hurt, our saddness, our pity on self, our "god"-ness, and stop clutching those things to us like a beloved blanket, then, and only then, may we be healed of those things.
Until that time, we are pulling the scars open, digging a knife, a hot knife, back through the hurt. We rehash every incident, either through our minds or through verbal contacts. And, while this can be helpful to go through Christian counseling, it eventually needs to be forgiven so that we can stop the knife from peeling back the wound. Some wounds need cleaning in medicine numerous times...but eventually the only way healing can occur is to leave the wound alone with a dressing and undisturbed time to heal.
Our dressing is through the Word, the Spirit, and, oh, the loving arms of our Father...with forgiveness completed, truly completed, then we can freely enter His presence in prayer, worship and study, and feel healing setting in so much deeper than ever before. Holding onto those scars just deepens and widens them, making it difficult to fully concentrate on God...it is hard to concentrate on anything with a fresh wound throbbing. We may have to pray mightily for us to be willing to drop using a knife on those scars...we can begin to get an evil pleasure in pulling up the past, mentally or in conversation.
So let us forgive and forget (although do keep safe---hurts are sometimes warnings.), and move on to a deeper, healing relationship with the King. With time, the knife is taken from our hands, and we quietly heal until the scar is no longer angry, but a soft, thin line. With healing, we can help share God's love, for before we seem ever so hypocritical being in such anger or pity that we cannot show His love to it's fullest extent. Forgive my friends, as soon as possible.
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