We must stop hurting the hurting!  Let’s be gentle with our broken and wounded.   We’ve got to hold fragile hearts with loving hands, being oh so careful with our theology, using it as a balm, not a sledge hammer.  

  May we be slow to analyze or blame, and quick to empathize and love, because life is so very hard and until God makes all things new, people will be dying for a cold cup of water in their suffering.  We also must be careful not to wound a gentle spirit, which is to God a precious thing!  A wounded spirit comes as a result of a reaction to negative words, events, or actions of someone.  A reaction  that crushes you, knocks you down and from which you cannot seem to get back up.  It crushes an area of your life, your spirit, which is quite devastating in how it affects you and you can’t heal yourself of a wounded spirit.   Someone says something to you that ‘knocks you flat’ and takes the air out of you and you can’t get over it.  It’s like someone kicked you in the breadbasket and takes the very life out of you.  Those words are driven deeply into your spirit in a hurtful, crushing kind of way.  This grieves the Holy Spirit.   Jesus said what you do to the least of these you do unto Me.

  I know it’s not fair but bad things happen to good people!  People are suffering and dying for their faith.  Disease, suffering and death have no age limit.  Children are being abused, molested and killed every day.  People are starving everywhere, babies are going to bed hungry!  Mommas are crying themselves to sleep at night wondering where their missing child is.  Daddys are abandoning their families.  There are precious souls who have nowhere to lay their head.  People get sick and die.  Men and women are dying fighting for freedom.  The list goes on and on!  Bad things happen!  Suffering transcends all class, race, ethnicity, culture and privilege.  The wealthiest, most successful man on earth could lose his only daughter in a car wreck this afternoon.  There is no corner untouched by grief, no demographic, no alliance.  If you haven’t suffered, you haven’t lived long enough.

    I hate to bust your bubble but not all people are healed and it has nothing to do with your faith and you’re not being punished for some sin (real or imagined) you or someone else may have committed.  Let’s take a quick look at the case of Job.  Job suffered in ways incomprehensible leaving a trail of crushing confusion.  Job was a righteous man and had God’s stamp of approval but God allowed satan to bring hardships into Job’s life.  He lost his kids, his livestock, his home, and his health….everything he had.  And what’s interesting is that Job is never told why all those calamities fell upon him. God tells us it was satan, Job tells us it was God, his friends tell Job it was him.  I don’t know the who or the why and I’m quick to tell you I don’t have the answers but I do know one thing… God does not cause suffering!  He may use it but He doesn’t cause it!  It’s His heart’s desire to take our mess and turn it into a message, our test into a testimony, our trial into a triumph and to make victors out of victims.  He will never crush a spirit and a bruised reed He will not break.  God doesn’t tempt, abuse, endorse wickedness, abandon, or hate.  As long as we are on this earth, there will be suffering and dying! That’s a given!  We are born into tribulation and it will continue until Jesus returns or takes us out of here!

  In our darkest moment, when we are crushed, Jesus is as close as our own breath, as near as our next heartbeat, as close as the whisper of His name.  He is love and offers that love to comfort and hold close to His heart those who are suffering as only a Father can.

  We’ve put a yoke of despair on people who mourn, praising those who ‘suffer well’,  openly or a whisper in the ear, urging our brokenhearted to just ‘suck it up’.  

  Someone today is crying…”Is there no balm in Gilead?”  Yes, my friend there is!  If you are suffering today, imagine me grabbing both of your hands and inviting you to mourn; I will stand watch while you grieve, I will hold you while you cry.  Jesus grieved and wept over death so shed your tears my friend.  We have a Savior who cries.

 Grief cannot be sidestepped; it must be endured, so may we be a people who endure with one another rather than diminish, explaining away, propping up.  Let’s just hold one another through the dark night and wait for the sun to rise.  No need to pretend or whitewash the pain.  That is unnecessary among brothers and sisters.  We may not get a why, but we know the how… together. Jesus is so good and He loves you.  The sun will rise with healing in its wings, but until it does, may we all learn to be a soft place to fall, cushioning the blow for others until Jesus turns it all into glory.

In His love,
Elizabeth