The Theory of Life that Brings Value to our Suffering

Posted on May 12, 2017 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Where in the world but in Christianity?

Where in the world could you find a premise about life that ekes value out of suffering?

Suffering happens. There is no denying this. But to find value in this suffering that is common to us all?

The ancient Jews had come to understand this.

Isaiah. Jeremiah. Daniel. The Psalms.

This theory of the way life works finds its fulfillment in Jesus, of course.

…He learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.

To be made perfect.

This is our goal, our telos, or vision of life toward which our whole being is aimed.

To bring glory to God and to be God’s rulers on earth.

How? By being made like Jesus.

And it is our obedience in the middle of our suffering that brings this about.

Whether we are suffering from what others have done to us, whether we are suffering from grief or pain, whether we are simply suffering because our faithful lives are out of step with the people and powers of this world, when we are obedient in this suffering, we are made like Jesus.

Obedience in little things, every day, is practice for the urgent things, the catastrophes.

Obedience daily prepares us, is the only thing that can prepare us, for obedience in suffering

We celebrate in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces patience, patience produces a well-formed character, and a character like that produces hope.

Our hope is for the glory of God.

His glory is both the divine stewardship of this earth entrusted to us and the return of His presence to His people after our long exile.

Our hope is to be made like Jesus.

To be made perfect, as He is perfect.

This is the value in our suffering.

This is what makes it all worth it in the end.

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.

Art credit: All photographs are mine, copyright Made Sacred 2017

When You Cannot Believe or Feel or Care

Posted on May 5, 2017 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Suffering is not always great pain.

Sometimes suffering is a great numbness.

A deep loneliness or a fog of discontent.

A feeling that you are not doing much with your life or a lack of emotion in general.

Suffering is sometimes an absence of the felt presence of God.

My God, my God!

A cry of despair toward a seemingly empty heaven.

An emotion of not-caring which you feel should be frightening but is not.

Sometimes this is the cross we are asked to bear.

It is not as flashy or book-worthy, yet is just as real.

Just as difficult.

If this is you, may I believe for you until you can believe again?

God is here.

He is with you, even in the cloud.

He is with you, even in the dark.

Even when you cannot feel Him, when you cannot believe,

even when you cannot care,

just do the next right thing.

Behave as though you feel, believe, care.

I believe, I know.

He is here.

Even in the dark.

Perhaps especially in the dark.

He is with you.

And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

No matter how long you must continue to live this suffering that is your cross.

So He has promised.

So it shall be.

So take courage and keep walking.

He is with you.

Always.

Art credits: Moses in the cloud from a Bible primer by Hult, Adolf, 1869-1943; Augustana synod.; all other photographs copyright by Made Sacred, 2017.

Emmanuel on the Cross

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

The beauty of Lent is the demonstration of God’s presence in all circumstances.

The beauty of the cross is the proof that God is with us.

Wherever you are, whatever your cross is today, God is with you.

Emmanuel. God with us.

From Advent to Lent, God stepped into His world and submitted to the same rules we must follow.

Whatever the reason we all suffer, whatever the purpose, we cannot say that God did not play fair by asking us to be subject to something He was not willing to experience.

Are you broken? Jesus is broken with you.

Are you lonely? Jesus was despised and rejected by men.

Are you betrayed by your closest loved ones? Jesus, too, was betrayed by those He loved.

Does grief seem your closest and most constant companion? Jesus grieved and wept over those who would not accept Him.

In the words of Corrie ten Boom from the hell of a Nazi concentration camp: No matter how deep our darkness, he is deeper still.

When it feels as though life is beating you into the ground, when the weight of your burden does not allow you to rise from your bed in the morning, when you cannot carry your cross for one more step, you can know that He is here with you, carrying your cross with you, taking your burden on Himself.

Every tear we shed becomes His tear. He may not yet wipe them away, but He makes them His. Would we rather have our own dry eyes, or His tear-filled ones?

He came to us. He is here with us. We can be certain of Emmanuel in all circumstances.

If He does not heal all our broken bones and loves and lives now, He comes into them and is broken, like bread, and we are nourished.

Be nourished by the bread of life and know that He is with you.

Peace to you.

Final two quotes and many of the thoughts in this post are by Peter Kreeft in Bread and Wine

All photographs are copyrighted by Made Sacred, 2017.

Expecting both Crosses and Empty Tombs

Posted on March 17, 2017 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Crosses and empty tombs.

This is what life is made up of. Death and rebirth.

Seeds that die in the ground in order to bloom glorious, winter death that must happen in order to burst into green, the dying to self that is the only way into joy.

Crosses and empty tombs.

We are facing a couple of crosses in our family right now.

Really, just the possibility of crosses.

Although, as I sit quiet in candle-lit dark, it occurs to me that perhaps this waiting, this living in the possibility of a cross is, in itself, a cross.

What will I do when the cross looms large in my sight?

Where will I place these fears when all that crowds my vision is rough-hewn wood and sharp metal nails?

Will I continue to hope in the promise of an empty tomb at the end of the cross?

I must. If I have to drop to my knees and beg God to help me, I must remember.

If I am to survive any cross, whether heavy or light, I must pray, I must fast, I must fling myself by any means possible into the hands of the One who bore the heaviest cross of all…the One who then emptied that tomb.

Jesus promised us crosses. We are to expect them. And He also promised us empty tombs in the end. It may not happen until the end, but He gave His word that He would make those tombs empty again.

So I must remember. I must remember that God broke into time to show us that the empty tomb will always follow the cross.

I must remember the times in my own story when God brought an empty tomb after a cross.

When I cannot see beyond my cross, when I cannot trust on my own, I must look to Jesus who proved that His power and love are strong enough to bring forth an empty tomb after every single cross.

I must remember

and hope.

Crosses and empty tombs. They always go hand in hand.

Lord, we pray we never find ourselves without hope, without a glimpse of the empty tomb each time we happen upon a cross. Help us begin our daily journey expecting both crosses and empty tombs and rejoicing when we encounter either because we know you are with us. Amen. ~ from the Book of Common Prayer

Art credit: The Three Crosses by Rembrandt; Empty Tomb ink drawing from Catholic Hymns, 1860

from the archives

The Way into Suffering

Posted on February 17, 2017 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Suffering.

It infiltrates all lives. No one is exempt.

Physical pain, grief, loneliness, fear.

At times the suffering is wholly yours, at other times you suffer by witnessing another’s pain.

Although it is common to us all (or perhaps because it is common to us all), we spend much of our time and energy attempting to avoid pain.

When our own efforts toward that end seem doomed, we resort to prayer. We beg and plead with God to remove our pain, to rescue us from our distress.

Satan seems to know this about us. He knows that we would do almost anything to evade discomfort and he uses this knowledge to his advantage.

He certainly did with Jesus. In the wilderness, Satan’s temptations were aimed at convincing Jesus to achieve his goals any other way than God’s way of the cross. God’s way of suffering.

Yet the cross, the way of suffering, was the purpose of the incarnation. Yes, Jesus performed miracles and taught wisely, but His mission was the cross.

Now my soul is troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ But for this purpose I have come to this hour.

Jesus understood what was coming. He knew what agony was lurking. Yet He also knew His purpose.

He did ask once to be spared. He wept in a garden and pleaded for there to be another way to heal the world from the consequence of another garden.

And in the end, He submitted. He surrendered to the way of the Cross and was made perfect by His suffering.

If Christ had to suffer to be made perfect, why in the world, why in God’s broken world do we think we can gain Jesus’ resurrection without passing through His suffering?

I do not mean that we should seek out adversity. In this world, it will assail us soon enough.

I mean that when it does come, these pangs that are common to us all, we should lean in and allow it to do its work.

Allow your suffering, whatever it may be, to carry you toward perfection.

This is the way of Christ. This is the way of all who follow Him. This is the way toward perfection.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. ~ James 1.2-4

Living in the Dark

Posted on December 23, 2016 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Christmas begins in the dark.

Advent, this season leading up to Christmas, is for us. It is for we who live in the dark.

This season seems to amplify pain. Those who are lonely feel more lonely, those who are grieving feel their grief more deeply, those who are hurting seem to suffer more.

And that’s okay.

It’s okay not to feel happy this time of year.

After all, Christmas doesn’t mean much if we don’t need it.

Mary understood. Her angel visitation led to a rift between her and her beloved, a painful journey on a donkey, and giving birth next to a chicken.

Even as she clutched her newborn son, she heard the prophecy of a sword piercing her heart and wondered.

Even after her Christmas, her beloved son grew farther and farther away from her, uttering such things as Why would you look for me? Don’t you know I must be about my Father’s business? and, when she came through the crowds to see him, My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.

Yet Mary stayed close. She trusted and held on to her faith in her son no matter how distant he seemed, even when he died. She stayed close. Everywhere we look in the gospels we see Mary, hovering on the outskirts, still showing up, still coming back to her son again and again.

Can we do the same?

Can we hold on to our faith in the Son no matter how distant He seems, even if He seems to be dead?

This world is dark and we live in a continual Advent.

Don’t run away from the bitter-sweetness of this Advent season. You don’t have to pretend to feel joyful.

Don’t hide behind the tinsel and lights. Neither should you ignore the colors completely.

Linger as you abide with the sorrow and the joy, the hurt and the hope that are woven together in this season. Stay close to the Son however far away He may seem.

Settle into the knowing of how desperately we need Christmas, how desperately we need God-with-us.

Our Father promised that Christmas would come

and it will be all the more beautiful for having lived through the darkness of Advent.

Art credit: Pieta by Michelangelo; all other photographs copyrighted by Elizabeth Giger

Be Still

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Be still.

Wait.

Be still and wait for God.

Be still and wait for God to come.

Advent is waiting and so we become still while we wait for Him to come down and rescue us.

We pause in our fighting and our striving, we rest from our grieving and our mourning, we stop to breathe in our busyness and our too much.

Just for a moment.

It doesn’t take any of it away. Yet.

But we become still like Moses with the Red Sea before and the Egyptian army after and we wait for God to fight for us.

We who have lived with the pain for far too long, we who have just received the phone call and sit at our kitchen table in stunned silence, we who can’t see how we will put one foot in front of the other much less get up from our beds in the morning, we who hide in our closets and weep our wracking sobs while we rock back and forth,

just for one moment we become still.

We remember that God is and that He is fighting for us.

It doesn’t solve or heal any of it. Yet.

But it will.

Oh, how it will.

We become still and we wait for Emmanuel. We wait for Emmanuel, God-with-us, to come down.

We wait in this season and we wait in this life for our Emmanuel to come down and fight and make it all okay again.

So for just a moment, take a breath and remember how He already did this once to show us that He will do it again.

Be still.

Wait.

edited from the archives

When You Have Trouble

Posted on August 5, 2016 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

God promised that this life would be hard.

It is part of what draws us together as humans, this trouble that comes to us all.

Whether the trouble is harming you directly or whether you are hurting while you watch one you love suffer, trouble is promised to us all.

Trouble is promised, yet Christ asked us to take up our cross if we want to come with Him, implying that we have a choice.

If trouble is not our cross, if we are guaranteed trouble no matter what, then what does it mean to take up our cross?

What does it mean to share in the sufferings of Christ, as Paul encourages us to do several times in his writings, and how can that bring us joy? This is, after all, trouble we’re talking about, not fun and relaxation.

As I read through the Bible, God seems to tell us that we have a choice. That when trouble arrives, as it invariably will, we have a choice of how to respond.

If we look to Jesus as showing us how to live life as we were created to live, we can see Him having to make the same choice and showing us which choice to make.

After the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus is telling the disciples that He will have to die in order to be honored and glorified.

Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour”? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!

Do you see His choice?

His heart is troubled as He looks ahead a few days to His crucifixion and He sees His choice clearly.

It is the same choice you have.

Will you run away from your trouble, trying your best to escape it?

Or.

Will you make the incredibly hard choice to accept your trouble, asking God to glorify His name in it?

Will you try to escape your cross or will you take it up?

Now, I certainly don’t mean that it is wrong to pray that God will take your trouble away. Jesus asked that of God in the garden when He asked for this cup to be taken away from Him.

I do believe, though, that the greater portion of peace and joy can be ours if we ask for God to be glorified in whatever we are facing.

This is what it means to be partners with Christ by sharing in His sufferings. This is what brings beauty and meaning to our own suffering. Suffering that will happen regardless of how we choose to respond.

It is hard to wrap our minds around this idea that suffering can be redemptive, bringing hope and healing to the world. Our world reacts so strongly against any kind of discomfort at all. Yet the entire life of Jesus shows us how grace and suffering can fit together.

This language that combines suffering and joy is all over Scripture. Jesus endured the cross for the sake of joy, Peter tells us to rejoice as we share Christ’s suffering.

Trouble comes to us all. The astounding piece of this is that God chooses to use us, if we will allow Him, for the greater good, for the healing of all around us.

So for you who don’t know how you will pay your bills next month, for you who lost a child, for you who can’t imagine an evening without a fight, for you whose heart just broke in two, for you who are walking through the crippling loneliness, depression, physical pain, doubt,

ask God to help you make the choice that will bring the most peace and joy, the choice that will bring healing to those around you.

Ask God to glorify His name through your trouble.

In this, you will be like Jesus. And God will grant you what you ask.

Art credit: Gethsemane by Carl Bloch

There Are Times

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Elizabeth

I took a short break from blogging after experiencing some very difficult times related to my writing, and I’m glad to be back in my writing space. As I searched for the way to be obedient in what happened, I discovered that I don’t believe God has released me from writing here in this space, so I published a couple of essays from my archives while I prayed and thought and wrote. Here is what I wrote in the aftermath of my troubles. I pray that it will give a small bit of help to you.

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

There are times when I feel desperate for God.

Times when my path forward seems dark

as the hour before dawn.

Times when the darkness seems to creep into my soul and

times when it wants to burst out of my heart and

threaten to hurt those around me.

I always know in a cerebral sense that my very being depends on God, but

there are times when I know it in a deep, carnal way.

These are the times I see clearly into my own heart and

tremble with fear for the rage I see there.

These are the times I am asked to forgive, to

turn the other cheek in a real and painful way.

These are the times I find I must return something

to God that is precious to me and find that my deepest self

wants to turn away from Him instead.

It is in these times that I fall on my face and

beg Him to surround me with Himself.

It is in these times that I lift up my eyes and

plead for Him to heal me from the inside.

It is in these times that I know with a gut-wrenching certainty that

I am, indeed, desperate for God

in all times.

I need Thee, oh, I need Thee;

Every hour I need Thee.

Oh, bless me now my Savior,

I come to Thee.

His is a Terrible Love

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

There is darkness in all of us.

It is a part of being human to feel the weightiness of the absence of God.

And there is an absence of God in this world. The Bible we profess speaks of it.

The prophets and psalms all speak of Him who is not there when He is most needed. The author of Hebrews strips all of our pretense away when he speaks of Noah, of Abraham, of Gideon and David and the rest who “all died without having received what was promised.”

It is the anguish of glimpsing the briefest glow of the light of presence without being allowed to bask in the sun.

It is a terrible love, this love of God for us. It is a love that means His absence as often as it means His presence. It is a love that Jesus speaks of when He utters in His darkest moment the piercing cry of Where are you, God?

You who are in heaven for us, why are you not down here in hell with us?

It is a terrible love that speaks of carrying our own cross, that utters the truth that all ye labor and are heavy laden.

It is a terrible love that wounds, or allows the wounds, before the healing can come.

It is a terrible love that weeps at the death of a friend, of Lazarus. They are tears that speak of the absence of God. Of the part of God in the very body of Jesus who would not save the life of His own friend.

This is, after all, the Gospel. It is terrible before it is beautiful. It is darkness before it is light.

We all labor and are heavy laden. We work so very hard to pretend that it is not so, but even when we are appalled at the darkness, we cannot help but listen to Jesus because we see in Him not only the darkness of being without God but the glorious light of what it looks like to be with God.

It is out of the absence of God that He becomes most present. It is out of the whirlwind, out of the storm that God first speaks to Job, answering Him not with answers but with Himself.

It is out of darkness that we first begin to perceive the light.

Paul says that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are”, and he points to “the apparent emptiness of the world where God belongs and to how the emptiness starts to echo like an empty shell after a while until you can hear in it the still, small voice of the sea, hear strength in weakness, victory in defeat, presence in absence.” ~ Frederick Buechner

The cross itself is a symbol of defeat before it is a symbol of victory and it, too, speaks of the absence of God.

When the absence is all that we see, when we are tempted to see in it a well of doubt that could lead us into atheism or at least into becoming agnostic, there is yet something else to see as well.

It was out of the darkness and absence that God first spoke. “In the beginning…the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Darkness is upon our faces as well, a void that sinks deep into our hearts. And perhaps it is necessary for the reality of this darkness to fold itself around us for us to be able to glimpse the reality of the word that God spoke into the darkness, “God said let there be light, and there was light.”

It is a terrible love that is offered to us, and perhaps we must face the truth of the terribleness before we are capable of accepting the love.

Art credits: Three Crosses sketch by Rembrandt; Supernova photo by NASA

edited from the archives