suffering love.

"Power forces us to change; only love can move us to change. Power affects the behavior, love affects the heart. And nothing on earth so moves the heart as suffering love.

That is why the perfect expression of God’s love for us is the dying figure of Jesus pleading for someone to moisten his burning lips.

... The longer I looked, the more I realized that no man has ever loved me and no one ever could love me as much as He did. 'Only the one who has experienced it can know what the love of Jesus Christ is. Once you have experienced it, nothing else in the world will seem more beautiful or desirable.'"

I'm nearly halfway through Brennan Manning's book, The Signature of Jesus. It's reiterating so much of what God has been teaching me and walking me through since last year: the meaning and reality of a life of suffering. What a nice, sentimental subject, right? I'm still not sure how to explain what my heart is experiencing here. It's not a mopey, pitied, "I must suffer to be a good Christian," thing. Nor is it something to take pride in. It's more like a decision, every day, to remember the Cross and follow Him. The prayer of my heart will always be, Lord, teach me how to follow You, because I do not know how. At least not the intellectual part of me. In the simplest of terms, following Him is natural because I love Him, and we live by that which we love. Or for Whom we love. So I'm just learning His heart, finding out where He is and where He isn't, and desiring to be there, anywhere, with Him. This desire, I'm discovering, will take me to some sketchy places, some crazy & unstable people, some dangerous situations. But what else would I be doing? I mean, honestly, is there anything else of importance in this life? I want to understand and experience the faith and authenticity of discipleship that led Paul to write the words for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. I have only tasted a smidge of a life lived in such abandon, and I will tell you: it is good. He is good. Oh, taste and see...

"To be like Christ is to be a Christian. When a disciple lives his or her life wholly for God, walking hand in hand with the Jesus for whom God is everything, the limitless power of the Holy Spirit is unleashed. God breaks through, miracles occur, the world is renewed, and history is changed."

"One of the mysteries of the Gospel tradition is this strange attraction of Jesus to the unattractive, His strange desire for the undesirable, His strange love for the unlovely. The key to this mystery is, of course, the Father. Jesus does what he sees the Father doing, he loves those whom the Father loves.

The gentleness of Jesus with sinners flowed from his ability to read their hearts and to detect the sincerity and goodness there. Behind men’s grumpiest poses and most puzzling defense mechanisms, behind their arrogance and airs, behind their sneers and curses, Jesus saw little children who hadn’t been loved enough and who had ceased growing because someone had ceased believing in them.

So central is Jesus’ teaching on humble apprenticeship and serving love as the essence of discipleship, that Christ makes himself recognizable only in our brothers and sisters. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Matt 25:40

this is from Katie Davis' blog. I encourage you to follow it and allow yourself to be challenged. What she is doing makes me question a lot in my life.

“I am so old. My whole body hurts. I have suffered much,” her eyes shine with joy as she speaks, “oh, I am suffering. But whatever He wants. Whatever God wants!” And she laughs and she laughs. We sit in our circle in the dust of a slum and we share our hearts and our prayers. Jja Ja Maria, who looks to be a hundred years old and reaches no higher than my shoulders, is the last to share.

Her life, it has been hard. She is in Jinja (Uganda) because she had to flee from the war in the North that tore apart her life and her family. Her son was shot last week by a soldier on the border of Uganda and Sudan and frail, little Jja Ja had made the 13 hour bus ride in the stifling heat and watched as they had lowered her last living child into the ground. The journey had taken almost a week and when she came back she found her grandchildren sick and even though her whole body ached from travel she still took them to the clinic and continued bending over her work so that she could make enough money to put food on the table. Now she is back and we are happy to embrace her and ask about her journey and ask how we can pray for her.

“Whatever He wants," she chuckles.

I look at the joy that is spilling out of her wrinkled face and I repeat the words that she has spoken in my head and that doesn’t make sense. She is hurt and she is suffering and she is laughing about it and sparkling with beauty and radiating Joy.

That doesn’t make sense. Not to me. Not yet.

But she already knows what I am just learning. That even this, it is from Him. Even this, it is Holy ground. This thing that I label suffering, it is really Joy."

"As we allow ourselves to experience our own pain, we can know that what we feel is Christ suffering in us and redeeming us."

Is it possible that we're missing out on true life by surrounding ourselves with so many comforts? I feel the weight of that question in the deepest parts of my soul. It's hard to follow Jesus. It's hard to live a different life than what I've known, than what I've been told. There will always be a discontent and a tension inside of me because I was not made for a world so filled with pain and suffering. As Kimberly Smith wrote in Passport Through Darkness, "After all, humans weren't made to live in this hell-- we were created for paradise with the King."

For now, there's nothing I can do to escape suffering. The world is full of it. It almost seems logical to accept it, to live it, willingly and gratefully. To let go of the false hope that I could somehow avoid it, to relish in the reality of a Good God who has so much more for me than this life. I wonder and dream of what it would be like to have such a knowledge of eternity that would cause me to let go of all the pressures, expectations, and rules of this world; to be so secure in His love and purpose. To be free. Really free. That is the longing of my heart. It's a backwards thought to think that freedom comes through suffering. But isn't that the foundations of the faith that we claim? And after much suffering, will not a glorious resurrection come?

In that promise, I will enter into suffering, seeing its beauty through new eyes, feeling its agony with a new heart, understanding it's place in our world with a new mind-- the mind of Christ. I will share the burdens of others & cast it all on Him. I will not be chained with fear, yet even when it creeps in, I will steadfastly stare into His face and do it afraid. I will take courage. I will count the cost. I will never lose hope. I will not love my life so much as to shrink from death. For He is my life and my salvation.

Amen.

"Those of us who wake up longing to know more than the rote answers our culture gives us, who long to recapture that dream God first held as He formed us in His hands, will indeed risk all to live that dream, be that dream.

Here, with our hearts beating wildly, taking stock of all that is at stake, we consider the risk of loss, including life itself. Our bodies wane, weaken, and prepare to die eve as we hope against all hope. Clinging to the truth of the resurrection, we throw off our fears and jump into the fray of life holding nothing of ourselves back. Here, in the unavoidable tussle of life and death, the dance floor opens for us to place our hand in His, trust His lead, and sway in the adoring arms of our Great Lover. Our God.

As when Abraham placed Isaac on the altar, when we’re ready to risk what we hold most sacred, we step into that adventurous life, the only one that matters. There we find our purpose and feel His pleasure-- His delight in us. In that Light and life, we find Him.

Our passport through darkness."