I read this verse while sitting in the Mumbai, India airport
for 8 hours. I had just spend a month visiting family and friends in America,
enjoying the beautiful PA outdoors, drinking pumpkin lattes J, and enjoying time to
rest and relax. While sitting in the airport, I was surrounded by people of
different nationalities, all speaking a foreign language. While this should
probably be normal to me by now, it seemed to hit on a new level.
My heart was hurting as I sat in that airport. I felt like I
had a place my heart was going back to, but at the same time- that meant I had
to say goodbye to another life with a wonderful community of family, friends,
and Church. Honestly, I remember sitting
there thinking my heart couldn’t handle it anymore. Sometimes it feels like my
life is divided into separate lives and sometimes, I’m not sure how to handle
that.
While sitting in the airport, I also was reading from the
book “The Insanity of God.” Warning: don’t read this book if you don’t want to
be convicted on many levels. The book is about two people who go to serve God
in a hard place and as a result, struggle with a lot of questions.
They ask God:
Do things always work out for those who are
obedient?
Does God really ask us to sacrifice- and to
sacrifice everything?
What happens when our best intentions are
not enough?
Is God at work in the hard places?
Is it possible to love God and to pretty
much keep living the life I already have?
Would He really allow people who love Him
dearly to fail?
Sitting in
the airport or sitting on my floor, writing this blog, in Pattaya, I ask the
same questions. I ask Jesus, why my heart has to hurt so much sometimes. I ask
why He asks me to go around the world again when sometimes I fail to see the
purpose, when sometimes it can feel like I’ve failed…and when sometimes it’s
just hard.
But as I
continued to read “The Insanity of God,” the authors didn’t just sit in the
place of questions. They sought out people who know what real suffering and
persecution is. They heard their stories and saw the ways God has worked
through extreme suffering. They asked these people how God can be in the midst
of the questions, how He can still truly be good, how their hearts can hurt so much
and still trust God. And they summarize
the lesson they’ve learned this way:
Before we can grasp the full meaning of the
Resurrection, we first have to witness, or experience crucifixion. If we spend
our lives so afraid of suffering, then we might never discover the true wonder,
joy, and power of a resurrection faith. Ironically, avoiding suffering could be
the very thing that prevents us from partnering deeply with the Risen Jesus.
Talking
about the followers of Jesus that they met, the authors write: They are willing to take that risk because
they believe that, ultimately, good WILL defeat evil. Love WILL finally
overcome hate. And life WILL conquer death forever by the power of our
resurrection faith.
Now that I’m
back and settling in a bit, my heart doesn’t hurt so much. I’ve stepped back into
my life here: with my friends, my job,
and my routine. And my “Thailand-life” continues.
But I’ve
found myself asking- is there supposed to be a struggle? Are we meant to be in the
hard places, struggling to see the light so that Jesus alone is glorified? If you’re not willing to kiss goodbye what
is dearest to you, you cannot be my disciple. That doesn’t necessarily mean
we need to physically let go of all things with value to us. But we need to hold
them with open hands.
We need to live
in the tension, in the struggle, in the midst of the questions, so we can witness
the crucifixion in order to experience the resurrection.
Let's do this together. Live in the tension with me?
