When God Weeps

by Joni Eareckson Tada

  A checklist like this sounds dry and technical, but years ago, it helped answer—at least in part—that sticky question, “Why does God pile on hardships so high?” Why? Well—hey!—God is more concerned with conforming me to the likeness of his Son than leaving me in my comfort zones. God is more interested in inward qualities than outward circumstances. Things like refining my faith and humbling my heart, cleaning up my thought life and strengthening my character. Not a bad answer.

  But not always the best one.

  Sometimes good answers aren’t enough.

  THE ONLY ANSWER THAT SATISFIES

  “Hey, Connie,” I said to my friend over the phone, “I’m flying into Baltimore for a speaking engagement in a couple of weeks and I would love to get together with some old Young Life club friends.” I couldn’t think of a better way to spend time off in my hometown than to dress up for a fancy luncheon with my high school girlfriends and swap stories, pass photos, dig up funny memories, and carve out an hour for prayer and hymn-singing. We hadn’t been together since graduation in ‘67, and I was on pins and needles to see them.

  I wheeled through Connie’s front door three weeks later, geared up for a soulful afternoon.

  “What did you do to your hair?”

  “Hey, I brought a couple of old songbooks.”

  It was a traffic jam of hugs and hellos in the entry way of her house until Connie called us into the dining room. Linen, china, bowls of fruit, and fresh flowers greeted us.

  “Okay, I have only three requests,” I announced after grace was sung and platters started around the table. “Set aside time for prayer, singing, and each give an update on what’s been happening.”

  Millie, at the far end with her arm in a cast, started. Yes, we’d all sign her cast before leaving, and, yes, I promised I wouldn’t drool when I autographed it with my mouth. No, we didn’t realize it had been on for months. Oh really? The prognosis is that bleak? The news of chronic infection subdued us.

  Next, was Jacque, my fun-loving friend with whom I shared boyfriends, milkshakes, and laps around the hockey field. “You all know about my husband. It didn’t work out between us. My son’s having a rough time getting off drugs,” she spoke to her plate, pushing food with her fork. The table was quiet except for the clinking of silverware.

  The mother of my high school boyfriend, Mrs. Filbert, told how her son’s wife had fled the marriage, leaving her to tend to her grandchildren while he worked. Now that the grandkids were older, she was devoting her time to her husband stricken with Parkinson’s. I heard words, but I saw memories of long ago Friday evenings when I would play the piano in her stately home. A safe, orderly, beautiful home, which kept heartache beyond the threshold. “Some people say I shouldn’t give up speaking at Christian Women’s Clubs,” she said, her eyes becoming wet. “But I’m convinced the Lord has me where he wants me.”

  At the far end sat Diana, taking it all in. She hadn’t said much. When we greeted each other, she seemed unusually quiet. It was her turn to speak. Diana’s glum look fit her words as she shared a story of rebellion and drug abuse in her family. Dishes stopped clattering. Ever since high school, Diana had been a spiritual stalwart. Closer to God than any of us. But today, the immovable and unshakable Rock of Gibraltar stared into her lap. “I wasn’t going to come to this luncheon. We brought my son home late last night from the rehab unit. It was pretty bad. I don’t know…I just don’t know.”

  Silence settled over us. One person felt uneasy with the quiet—Jacque, the one who also had a son with drug problems. “Well, you gotta keep hoping, keep praying. Somehow, you gotta know it’s going to work out. Keep believing. Who knows? Maybe this happened because—“Jacque checked off a few inward qualities God was probably fashioning as a result of outward circumstances. Ironclad faith. Robust character. Buoyant hope. Sensitivity to others. But a heavier silence. Diana already knew all that.

  She could tie any of us up in a tangle of theological thread from her years of Bible study, not to mention a Masters in counseling. She knew the doctrinal ropes; she had spoon-fed me “suffering develops patience” and “suffering refines faith” when I kept bugging her as to “why?” Diana was doing that thirty years ago.

  Slowly, out of the silence, a song began. First faintly, then swelling as all joined in:

  There is a balm in Gilead

  To make the wounded whole;

  There is a balm in Gilead

  to heal the sin sick soul.2

  The old favorite from Young Life Club days came rising out of our memories as though we were saddle-shoed teenagers again, sitting cross-legged on the church-hall floor.

  It was an old spiritual inspired by the prophet Jeremiah who, amidst the horror of the Babylonian invasion, asked, “Is there no healing for our wounds? Is there no answer for our weeping?” Back in high school, we sang about God, the balm in Gilead, to soothe a wounded heart from a sophomore crush. But now the lyrics glowed with a smooth patina from years tarnished by divorce, paralysis, disease, and drugs.

  We sang the last note, then Connie sighed, “Dessert, anyone?” Mrs. Filbert got up and began clearing the table. Chairs shuffled, dishes clinked, and the room filled with pleasant chatter. As coffee was served, I sat back and realized I had just passed—we all passed through—a new milestone.

  When your heart is being wrung out like a sponge, an orderly list of “sixteen good biblical reasons as to why this is happening” can sting like salt in a wound. You don’t stop the bleeding that way. A checklist may be okay when you’re looking at your suffering in a rearview mirror, but when you’re hurting in the present tense, “Let me explain why this is happening” isn’t always livable.

  Answers, no matter how good they are, cannot be the coup de grace. Purified faith is never an end in itself; it culminates in God. Stronger character is character made muscular not for its sake, but God’s. A livelier hope is more spirited because of its focus on the Lord. To forget this is to tarnish faith, weaken character, and deflate hope. “If you have these qualities existing and growing in you then it means that knowing our Lord Jesus Christ has not made your lives either complacent or unproductive” (2 Peter 1:8 PHILLIPS).

  We must never distance the Bible’s answers from God. The problem of suffering is not about some thing, but Someone. It follows that the answer must not be some thing, but Someone. “Knowing our Lord Jesus Christ” is keeping your eye on the Sculptor—not on the suffering, or even suffering’s benefits.

  Besides, answers are for the head. They don’t always reach the problem where it hurts—in the gut and the heart. When a person is sorely suffering, like my friend Diana, people are like hurting children looking up into the faces of their parents, crying and asking, “Daddy, why?” Those children don’t want explanations, answers, or “reasons why”; they want their daddy to pick them up, pat them on the backs, and reassure them that everything is going to be okay.3

  Our heartfelt plea is for assurance—Fatherly assurance—that there is an order to reality that far transcends our problems, that somehow everything will be okay. We amble on along our philosophical path, then—Bam!—get hit with suffering. No longer is our fundamental view of life providing a sense of meaning or a sense of security in our world. Suffering has not only rocked the boat, it’s capsized it. We need assurance that the world is not splitting apart at the seams. We need to know we aren’t going to fizzle into a zillion atomic particles and go spinning off in space. We need to be reassured that the world, the universe, is not in nightmarish chaos, but orderly and stable. God must be at the center of things. He must be in the center of our suffering. What’s more, he must be Daddy. Personal and compassionate. This is our cry.

  God, like a father, doesn’t just give advice. He gives himself. He becomes the husband to the grieving widow (Isaiah 54:5). He becomes the comforter to the barren woman (Isaiah 54:1). He becomes the father of the orphaned (Psalm 10:14). He becomes the bridegroom to the single person (Isaiah 62:5). He is the healer to t
he sick (Exodus 15:26). He is the wonderful counselor to the confused and depressed (Isaiah 9:6).

  This is what you do when someone you love is in anguish; you respond to the plea of their heart by giving them your heart. If you are the One at the center of the universe, holding it together, if everything moves, breathes, and has it’s being in you, you can do no more than give yourself (Acts 17:28).

  It’s the only answer that ultimately matters.

  And we’ve only just begun.

  Nine

  MAKING SENSE OF SUFFERING

  Reasons reach the head, but relationships reach the soul. It’s the friendship of God reaching out to us through our trials that draws the bottom line of suffering.

  Try this story. You are walking down a street, minding your own business, when you are accosted and forced to carry a huge and heavy basket on your back. You’re ordered to walk three blocks, turn left, go two blocks, turn right, then proceed straight on. Staggering under the weight, you stumble on, bewildered and angry. The weight of the basket is crushing. Your back is breaking. The whole thing is meaningless and haphazard. You resent how the heavy burden consumes you, becoming the focal point of your entire existence.

  When you are halfway down the third block, reeling under the burden, you finally bellow, “What gives!”

  The truth is then revealed. The burden you are carrying is your child, injured and unconscious. “What?” On top of that, you discover you are not trudging through a meaningless rat-maze but the most direct route to a hospital emergency room.

  Immediately you straighten. You inhale new vigor. Your knees quit buckling. Adrenaline and fresh energy quicken your pace, and you move forward with a new attitude. Why the change? The suffering you’re going through involves a relationship. Not just any relationship, but one with your child. It is the love you have for your child that quickens your step and buoys up your heart. Your relationship gives your burden meaning. Even your twisted path makes sense. You know where you are going. Your journey has a positive end—the hospital—and this instills hope.

  Suffering has no meaning in itself. Left to its own, it is a frustrating and bewildering burden. But given the context of relationship, suffering suddenly has meaning.

  FINDING RELATIONSHIP IN SUFFERING

  In the film Sleeper, Woody Allen plays a character who wakes up in another century, having been frozen in a scientific experiment. He is given a stack of photographs from our century to identify, which prompts a series of hilarious one-liners. Billy Graham’s picture comes up. Allen pauses, then says, “Billy Graham…claimed to have a personal relationship with God.” The audience, of course, cracks up. That is how absurd the idea sounds to some. Indeed, it is an astonishing claim.1

  What’s more astonishing is that God doesn’t crack up. There’s nothing absurd, from his point of view, about a personal relationship with humans. He’s a host issuing party invitations left and right. He’s a shepherd leaving the ninety-nine in the field, seeking the one lost lamb. He’s a king lavishing a party on beggars. He’s got a place reserved. He’s interested in relating.

  I want to know God like this! Shove me under the waterfall of the Trinity’s joy, which splashes and spills over heaven’s walls. If he’s always in a good mood, I want to catch it. If I’m lost, I want him to find me. Part the heavens, Lord, come down, kick aside the money tables, trash the “Don’t Touch” rules and embrace me.

  It should be that passionate. But we, creatures of systems and procedures, get stuck. Maybe in a style of worship, whether liturgical or “guided-by-the-Spirit.” Maybe in a favorite way of studying the Bible or a certain method of prayer: confession first, repentance second, then praise and thanksgiving, intercession next, then praise again. We make these things the focus.

  Study methods and worship techniques are helpful in getting introduced to God (we have to start somewhere), but they easily become flat and mechanical when cultivating a personal relationship. Even Jesus was astounded that people could devote their entire lives to studying Scripture and yet fail to know the One to whom Scripture was pointing (John 5:39–40). Focusing on regiment and routines will do for business executives, army sergeants, and Pharisees, but not God. You might scratch the surface with him, but it’s more—much more—than “Do A, B, or C and you will know God better.” He is not a missing piece of our life which, once found, can be bolted into place so our spiritual lives run efficiently and smoothly.

  Personal relationships don’t work that way. Certainly not when it comes to God. If we want to grow closer to someone—God or anybody—it means pressing hearts together. Talking, discussing likes and dislikes. Finding joy in each other. Checking in with each other, as with your spouse. “Anything I can do for you? Do you need something?” Rolling up your sleeves and muscling a job-well-done together. A strong relationship is the weaving together of many shared experiences.

  Such things make for intimacy. Yet intimacy can’t be regimented. Disciplining myself to spend regular time with someone can be regulated but not the intimacy itself. Intimacy happens as two souls rub together. It’s what we long for more than anything else. To know and be known. Even in the best relationships, we are still left aching for someone to comprehend our world and enter our struggle—to embrace us with a passion that seizes and melts us into a union that will never be broken. God answers that ancient longing. A yearning that echoes with the message that we were made for him. Strike the tuning fork of God’s perfect pitch and something resonates in us, not on key, but in the same range. We’re like the harlots, the homeless, and the handicapped of Jesus’ day who knew that he could fill the gaping hole in their souls. They followed him everywhere. Shared experiences ease the ache.

  One experience in particular does it. You wouldn’t choose it. It’s not tidy. You can’t deal with it methodically. It’s ugly, messy, painful, and risky because it can draw you closer to God or drive you away. But once you muddle through, you wouldn’t trade the sweetness of your intimacy with God for anything. It knits your heart together with his like nothing else.

  This particular experience binds you to God like it binds you to people. Veterans from World War II know this. So do survivors of cancer, a plane crash, or the polio epidemic of the fifties. Roommates in a hospital ward feel it.

  It’s shared suffering. When you’re in the trenches, handing bullets to your buddy and fighting a common enemy, hearts can’t help but be pressed together. Your knowledge of each other is unique and intimate to you. To you both.

  I have a friend named Skip who was spinal cord injured the same day and year as I. Whenever our paths cross, we size up each other’s wheelchairs and—instant camaraderie! I’m closer to my neighbors since the Northridge earthquake of 1994; my husband Ken ran outside after the initial jolt and, in the dark, nearly collided with Brian and Mr. Hollander. They froze, feeling the street beneath them shake like a jackhammer. “Here’s someone who’s been there. Who knows exactly how I feel…what I’ve experienced. We share something unique to us.”

  The esprit de corps among fellow sufferers is deep.

  Suffering shared with God is deeper.

  I WANT TO KNOW CHRIST

  “When do I get to have my wheelchair, Daddy?” Five-year-old Matthew looked up into the face of his father, his liquid brown eyes doleful and pleading. Matthew and his brother, Stephen, had spent a week with their parents volunteering at one of our JAF Retreats. They made buddies with scores of boys and girls who used crutches, walkers, and wheelchairs. I laughed when Jim, their father, relayed to me Matthew’s request. This little boy doesn’t need a wheelchair. He has no use for one. But try telling him that!

  A wheelchair, for Matthew, would top his Christmas wish list. A wheelchair means a joy ride. It also means an initiation into a wonderful club: a special group of kids who enjoy a special relationship with Joni. This five-year-old hasn’t a clue about the pain and paralysis, the heartaches and hurdles. He discounts all of that, disregarding the dark side. All he desires is a c
hance to be among my best friends, a chance to identify with me, be like me, a chance to know me. If it means having a wheelchair, great. He’ll welcome it.

  It takes a child like Matthew to illuminate the true emotion behind the apostle Paul’s words, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him” (Philippians 3:8-10). Matthew wanted to join a club, but the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings is not an inner circle of elite believers. The word fellowship in the original text was koinonia—the experience of sharing something in common.

  The apostle Paul had this in mind when he wrote, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10). You can almost hear the excitement in Paul’s voice, his eyes—like five-year-old Matthew’s—doleful and pleading. Paul disregards the dark side, the heartaches and the hurdles. If it means suffering, fine. He’ll take it. He’ll take on anything for the sake of knowing Christ. Pain and death, when they entered the world by the fall of humans, wasn’t what God cherished for man; but when Adam chose suffering over the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering into a way man could know God better. Paul understood this. I want to know Christ!

  The words “to know” mean a warm, intimate, and deep union. As in the book of Genesis where it says Adam knew his wife, Eve (Genesis 4:1 KJV). It’s a spiritual picture of a physical joining-together. Paul didn’t want simply to know Jesus in his head; he wanted to experience him in his heart, his whole being. Not only to catch God’s good mood and delight in the cascade of his joy, but to feel God embracing him with a passion, seizing and melting him into a union never to be broken.