Image: Wang Xi on Unsplash.
This life is the only life we know, so we’re forgiven for
wanting life on our terms — the terms of happiness.
God wants to give us far more than happiness, at least by the
terms of happiness that we think will make us happy.
Happiness is a counterfeit
for the joy God has for us.
for the joy God has for us.
Then something happens one day that renders ‘happiness’ a
pipedream that you must say goodbye to.
We call it grief;
loss that sends us spinning
a thousand revolutions a minute
into a barrelling despair.
loss that sends us spinning
a thousand revolutions a minute
into a barrelling despair.
The temerity of life that scourges us to the extent of casting
us into a thousand pieces of derision. This is a place of soul where we
experience something we never thought, as a human, we ever could or would.
We’re astounded as to just how deep suffering possibly is. From
our own lived experience, we see that it is unfathomable. And compassion
blossoms within us commensurate with the rate of us being overwhelmed; a
dialogical encounter takes place — we know a suffering we detest, yet we see at
the same time how it is opening the eyes of our heart. God is doing it.
I know grief — the experience of life of having lost it all to
the point where it broke me — that experience coupled with God’s real felt
Presence and a recovery program — forced me routinely into a place where I had
no defence.
Every time I got up I felt I was smashed down, and yet I had the
very real sense that God was for me and not against me. I could not procure
such an understanding in my own mind or strength. It was a gift and I don’t
know why I got it and others in my circumstances don’t. I know I was desperate
for help. I know I could no longer do life on my own terms.
The terms of securing my own happiness
had failed me miserably.
had failed me miserably.
I know it was a blessing in disguise
to feel completely beaten, yet be open to help.
to feel completely beaten, yet be open to help.
Grief is the golden gateway
to the true experience of the Christian life,
and loss is the master key.
to the true experience of the Christian life,
and loss is the master key.
God’s Kingdom is an upside-down kingdom. It works through loss,
not through success. The successful are forever prevented from the life the
unfortunates could acquire in an instant. Adding Jesus to an already successful
life makes a life seem a little more altruistic. Good. It feels good. But it
fails because it’s a spirituality predicated on happiness; on the fleeting
notion of prosperity, not on the eternal notion which commands transformation.
Transformation cannot happen without suffering loss,
so we ought not to resent loss, for it is opportunity.
so we ought not to resent loss, for it is opportunity.
I often pity the person who hasn’t yet suffered. When it does
come, they won’t know what hit them! That was my reality at the tender age of
36, which is so fortunate, which I pity all the more children who
suffer, for they’re not equipped developmentally. The Spirit of God is found in
suffering, in grief, in (genuine) persecution, because it’s in these places we
bellow for help in the hope it will come, and the longer we bellow without
experiencing the help we so need, whilst striving valiantly to endure, the
deeper God takes us into Himself. It is a remarkably consistent method God
uses. Trust it.
The quest for happiness is making you miserable. It’s because you’re
using God as a means to get something you’ve devised in your mind that you
think will satisfy you; your dream, your vision, your plan. And God cannot give
it to you against His own nature. Besides, what you think will satisfy you will
never satisfy you.
God won’t be used. God will not allow us to use Him. But when we
say, ‘God, use me in any small and insignificant way you wish,’ He blesses that
heart in a spiritual way that enlivens virtue.
The priceless possessions in life are the spiritual possessions,
not the material possessions.
not the material possessions.
Suffering takes us directly to some of the most treasured items
a human being could own: compassion, insight, awareness, regard, consideration,
forbearance, and the heart to do loving kindness and the want to walk humbly.
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