As we watched and talked and grieved for our final support grouping, a theme emerged as central –pain and joy can co-exist, yes, must co-exist, and often. Moving on from a season, long or short, of grieving may require determined will in the midst of a lot of pain. This hard lesson will be repeated throughout our Christian life as we move past obstacles of failures, sin, regrets, loss, sickness; hurts of all kinds. Matthew 18:8 Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. Matthew 18:9 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye… Snares and…
Tag: <span>pain</span>
on the Danube at night In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord: my sore ran in the night, and ceased not: my soul refused to be comforted. Psalm 77:2 “Regret describes a slight disappointment over loss.” “Sadness is a taste of the truth that the world is not all right, creation is not what it was meant to be.” “Depression is a continual state of mind; effort appears futile because it seems that nothing can really help or provide meaning.” “Despair is the utter absence of any sense of hope, accompanied by a sense of powerlessness.” Quotes are from “The Cry of the Soul,” Allender and Longman. When a soul refuses to be comforted what is happening? The place of “dis-ease” appears to be safer? “Powerlessness” has displaced “power” as the more “real” value priority, through testing over time? Despair is insulating a person from the disappointment…
Lets delve into Job chapter three. We find Job cursing the day of his birth. An interesting idea; have we ever considered doing it? It doesn’t seem rational and actually makes no sense. Job didn’t care about the sense of it, nor what anybody thought at this point. He only knew that according to his own theology, he was being punished by God, must be hated of God, and was terrorized by the thought of a future in God’s hell. So, Job’s right-and-wrong-God-value-system gave way to a world in which comfort, on any level, became the exclusive goal. A fanatical blotting out of his pre-existence, a current death-wish contemplation, a seeking of quiet, a quelling of fear, (ugly and never ending dread) — overwhelmingly replaced the God of Job’s former days, Who is now unfaceable. I have read about post-traumatic-stress disorder. Symptoms reveal the possibility of “hyperarousal” which reflects itself in…
Lamentations 3:12-15 12 He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.13 He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins. 14 I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.15 He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. Ezekiel 24:16-18 16 Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down. 17 Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee, and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men. 18 So I spake unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife died; and I did in the…