Elizabeth Rundle Charles (1828-1896)2
Resurrection power is found at the cross, the place where we die to fierce unrest and low ambition. Resurrection power is cleansing power. Purifying power. It’s the ability to sweep clean every skeleton in your closet and shake loose every monkey off your back. Strength to break the ball and chain around your soul and swing wide the prison door to the fresh air of freedom. Power to say no to doubts and fears and power to say yes to God’s enabling. It’s what 2 Timothy 2:11-12 is all about: “If we die with him, we shall also live with him; if we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him.”
Maybe this answers that ancient longing I spoke of earlier. The yearning that echoes the message that we were made for him. If we strike the tuning fork of God’s perfect pitch, we will hear…perfection. Perhaps our desire to know him and the power of his resurrection is really an intense desire for holiness.
To be all that he created us to be.
COME TO THE CROSS AND FIND YOURSELF
Shawna Leavell could be a model in Paris, gliding down the runways at the finest fashion shows. Tall, lithe, with a blonde mane that breezes behind her as her long legs stride. When she was little, we’d camp up in the Sierras. I’d sit at the bottom of a cliff and enjoy vicarious rock climbing through her. Or trout fishing. “What a helpful kid,” I’d say to her mother as Shawna toasted me marshmallows or pushed me along the road of Coldwater Campground. Years later, art school and wardrobe work in the movie industry pushed her into a different life. An unsafe life.
Living alone in downtown Los Angeles, she walked the edge of darkness and depression. On a lonely Friday night, after a couple of glasses of gin, she stumbled out of the house, clouded and numb. In a fog, she climbed into her car, drove down the street and got on the Hollywood freeway. Up the exit. Shawna was speeding north straight into southbound traffic. Oncoming cars veered, flashing their high beams and honking. She doesn’t remember the head-on collision. She doesn’t recall the police cars, helicopters and bullhorns, and evening news reports on the television. One man dead. Another seriously injured. A wife left without a husband and three children without their father.
Days later, a policeman was still posted outside of Shawna’s hospital room where she lay bruised in a body cast. When I wheeled up to her bedside, she moaned through swollen lips. “I am…so sorry.” Gone was the happy, free-spirited little camper with the sunny hair. She would never be the same.
The proof is in her letters from prison. It took over two years for her final sentencing, but in the custody of her mother, she diligently prepared for prison by attending Pastor Jack Hayford’s church five nights a week and then Sundays at her mother’s church. Bible institute. Prayer meetings. Witnessing. And always, whenever we were together, tender tears of repentance. When she was finally led away in chains, she welcomed justice. She embraced the chance to tell other women in prison that a sinful, self-serving life kills.
Shawna wasn’t expecting the prison to be so overcrowded that she would be forced to endure a stint on death row, isolated and without her Bible. “I needed that. It tested my foundation.” I heard this week she was finally moved to a cell with seven other women. Shawna stands out. They are tough; she’s tender since the accident. They are black; she is very white. They never went camping with their mothers, rode horses, or went to art school. But differences attract attention. Many of the women are approaching Shawna for prayer and advice. One of them scoffed, “You think you’re so high and mighty, better than us,” to which Shawna replied, “Oh no, you’re wrong. I’m the worst. I had every chance. I was given every opportunity. And I blew it. But Christ has forgiven me, the worst of sinners. And he can forgive you, too.”
When Shawna is released from prison, she hopes to approach the family of the victims and play a part in redeeming their spilled blood. She, after all, spilled it. She will be forever reminded by the rods in her back and the pain in her ankle that sin destroys. But suffering—especially suffering as a consequence of sin—“is better than a life of rebellion,” to use her words.
Shawna may have thought that, at the core, she was the fun-loving bohemian at home on Rodeo Drive or the high Sierras. Perhaps she thought her identity was wrapped up in the art world or in the movie world. But suffering forced her to be utterly alone with herself. Suffering is what most tested her as a person, examining her, sifting and asking, “Who are you?” When Shawna tried to answer, she was overwhelmed. Her darker side may have been hidden before, she may have manipulated circumstances before that fateful night, she may have succeeded in not appearing petty or vindictive, but the accident changed all that. Suffering interrogated her, asking, “You think you’re so good!”
Shawna’s true identity was scraped off the concrete of the Hollywood freeway. A sinner deserving death. And it’s a good thing. If sin had kept its free hand in her life, it would have destroyed the very depth of her personality.
Sin destroys the one reality on which our true character, identity, and happiness depend: our fundamental orientation to God. We are created to will what God wills, to know what he knows, to love what he loves. Sin is the will to do what God does not will, to know what he does not know, to love what he does not love…in all these things sin proves itself to be a supreme injustice not only against God but, above all, against ourselves.3
“It was needed,” she writes, “in order for me to die to the pull of sin.”
“Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God” (1 Peter 4:1-2).
The test of suffering is never ameliorated. We cannot escape its interrogation. It will always reveal the core of who we are. If we love ourselves selfishly, suffering will carbonate into sin. Evil in us will fizz to the surface and spread poison. Hardships will make us hateful and, in order to avoid suffering, we will inflict pain on ourselves and flail out at others. When that happens, suffering makes us worse than we were. Affliction doesn’t teach us about ourselves from a textbook, it uses the stuff inside of us.
It’s humiliating to be sandblasted to the core. The mask of pride ripped away. The veneer of pettiness peeled off. But there’s something refreshing about knowing yourself at the core. The vulnerability. The transparency. The “nothing” between God and us.
And thankfully, God doesn’t leave us stripped bare.
The beauty of being exposed and empty is that God can then cover you. Like a surface that must be scrubbed clean before you can bond anything to it, the bonding of intimacy between God and us won’t adhere until the film of dirt goes, the ambitions, the vanity, everything that sets itself up against others and God.
It’s not just that sin is removed; the saint is built up: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Romans 8:29). Remember when we said that God delights in his own reflection? That the mirror image of himself is his Son? Think of his joy when he sees Christ in you. Nothing enthralls him more. When the soul empties itself of pride and pettiness, Christ fills it up. It’s just another way of saying Colossians 3:3, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” You die. He lives.
Nothing could be more gloriously bittersweet. Not sweet, but bittersweet.
Have you ever noticed that there is a kind of suffering and a kind of dying that we secretly long for, that is indescribably delicious in a mystical way? This is not ordinary suffering (unless we are masochists). But we want to die when we have a mystical experience. I only felt it twice: once when swimming in the ocean in a great storm and once when first hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The French call sexual intercourse le petit mal, the little death. It is an end, a consummation, like death, yet a consummation devoutly to be wished. The mystics speak of their deep desire to die in God, to become nothing in God…What does it mean that we long to di
e, to suffer total self-loss? And what does it mean that joy is close to tears and that the most wonderful things are not sweet but bittersweet?4
Tears never tasted so good until I entered the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. Until then, I never wept bitterly over lost souls and a hurting world. The ache in my heart never felt so fiery and passionate. Sorrow and joy never seemed so sweetly mingled. Hope never seemed so solid. Being alone never seemed so satisfying.
My mother has always been surrounded by family, friends, neighbors, but now that she’s eighty-three, has lost her husband, and has sold the family home, she spends a great deal of time by herself. Loss has emptied her, but God has filled her. I used to worry about her being alone until she said recently, “Joni, God has changed me. I don’t mind being by myself. I like myself and so I enjoy being with me.” Mom likes what she sees: not herself, but Christ in her, the hope of glory.
Affliction is the gristmill where pride is reduced to powder, leaving our souls naked, bare, and bonded to Christ. And it feels beautiful.
POWER IN SUFFERING
It happens by sharing in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings.
It’s poignant that when the Son of Man walked on earth, he had the comfort of his Father, but none from his friends. No fellowship of suffering on this planet for him. He only had the blind insensitivity of his disciples. No moral support. No joy in carrying his cross—he bore it “for the joy that was set before him.” He went without comfort so that you might be comforted. He went without joy so that you might have it. He willingly chose isolation so that you and I might never be alone. Most wonderfully, he bore God’s wrath so that you wouldn’t. God has no anger for you; only forgiveness, mercy, and grace.
If “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance” (Romans 2:4), then there’s only one response to love like this: beat the breast and “submit yourselves, then, to God…come near to God…wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts…grieve, mourn and wail” (James 4:7-9).
Sound morbid? Maybe. But this is where real power kicks in—not primarily to overcome suffering. That’s putting the cart before the horse. Resurrection power is meant to uproot sin out of our lives. Then we, with holy hearts, experience a greater degree of his love. It is in Christ’s love that we become more than conquerors. Intimacy with Jesus gives us the brighter perspective, the happier hope. When it comes to pushing through pain, Jesus is the force on our side. “Apart from me, you can do nothing” he reminds us (John 15:5).
Remember Julia Beach? We left her lying in bed, wondering how she will find the strength to face another day. Today, before she opens her eyes and throws back the covers, she will pray, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13). She will leave behind the fears and overwhelming feelings, the sin. Divine energy will surge through her the moment she begins moving into the morning’s challenges. As the hours wear on, it’ll be a struggle. She will have to go to God many times out of desperate need, but she’ll have strength—Jesus’ strength. “I have been crucified…and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20), or to use Mrs. Beach’s words, “Dear Jesus, I am overwhelmed, I don’t have the strength…but you do. As I put one foot in front of the other today, I trust you’ll give me your power.”
And he will. “That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:19).
If God can raise Jesus from the dead, he can raise Mrs. Beach above her circumstances.
Section III
HOW CAN I HANG ON?
Ten
CRY OF THE SOUL
I don’t get it. I just don’t…get God.”
It’s a common comment when I’m with Greg Ericks, my coworker, heading to a meeting, a long freeway ahead and time to talk. Sometimes we’re quiet and I just watch him from my wheelchair behind the driver’s seat. Not many men have a profile as handsome as Greg. Tall, Dutch, blonde, and bright-eyed. Dresses nice too. Plaid shirts, jeans, and tweed jackets are his style, betraying that he’d be more comfortable camped by a trout stream in Montana than leading workshops.
The profile I see today is not picture-perfect for Gentleman’s Quarterly. Greg is divorced, and every once in awhile the half-healed wound seeps. Like this afternoon. He has one hand on the wheel while stretching with the other to feed his son, Ryan, banana and crackers. Ryan—his beautiful ten-year-old, whose happy-hearted smile makes you forget he’s retarded, incontinent, and, except for his giggles or occasional shrieks, can’t put two words together in a sentence. Ryan is as handsome as his father. And despite the many seizures, just as pleasant to be around. I watch them and try to picture Ryan’s mother on the scene, holding him on her lap, banana neatly sliced and peeled in a Tupperware. Banana mush drips from Ryan’s chin.
Greg is diabetic, I remember as, with his free hand, he tosses the banana peel and reaches for his insulin kit. Prick finger. Watch freeway. Swig sugary apple juice. Eye on Ryan. “Hey, big boy,” he puckers. Ryan dazzles us with his grin. Greg’s as driven as he drives, his hamster-wheel-days made dizzy, one problem to solve after the next. Then there’s his twelve-year-old daughter, Kelsey. Blossoming, budding, and forcing her dad to be the best he can be.
Sundays are the hardest. Like last Sunday afternoon when he and the kids bumped into their mother in a drug store. Kelsey, Ryan, and Mommy became a bundle of hugs. Greg wished he could be part of the bundle, but it was the usual awkwardness. Niceties were exchanged, then it was time to move on. Screams and tears from Ryan as they part company. More screams from him when Greg drops Kelsey off. Screams again as Greg leaves Ryan at the door of his foster group home. The day closes out with a speeding ticket, going fifty in a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone. He stares vacantly at the policeman. Greg doesn’t care.
We drive for a long time in silence. Finally he sighs, “Ryan, with those traces of scars on his face from falling down—” he leans over and touches his son who is the angel asleep in the front seat. “I love the way he runs, stumbles, and trips his way to me whenever I come to pick him up. Still, the fury occasionally simmers. I don’t get why God does this…allows this. All of this,” his voice trails. “I just don’t get it.”
I don’t get it either, I want to say. The long stretch of darkening freeway has set the straight-ahead tone for “I don’t get it” conversation, reducing the world to good and bad, black and white, “why” and “why not?” I don’t get why Greg and his ex-wife can’t be a real family. Greg loves his children. When I met their mother months earlier, she was equally loving and caring. I want to grab them both and say, “Things aren’t that bad—love and goodness should triumph here.” But it’s a world of irreconcilable differences. An ex-world. Like some weird divorce between God and his Creation that should have never happened.
As we turn into our hotel, I catch Greg’s profile highlighted by headlights. I shake my head. It’s Sunday night. After Greg drops me and my friends off, he heads with Ryan to his group home. If Ryan stays asleep as he carries him to the front door, it will be a good night.
If not, it will be worse than bad.
Most of the world lives this way. I don’t mean that most people are divorced or the single parents of handicapped children; I mean that the troublesome situations most people find themselves in don’t go away. They don’t get better. Greg and his former wife probably won’t remarry. It’s doubtful Ryan will experience a miracle of healing. When it’s day-in and day-out, lifting one foot in front of the other, suffering doesn’t have to be as severe as divorce or a serious disability; it could be the weariness of constantly refereeing rowdy teenagers. It could be slaving all afternoon in the kitchen and not hearing a hint of “Good dinner, Mom!”
Most of the time we can manage. Like jugglers spinning plates on long sticks. And if rowdy teenagers or drop-dead dinnertimes discourage us, we squeeze in a heart-to-heart talk with a close friend bef
ore rushing to spin the next plate. We keep a journal, venting our frustrations on paper. We soak in the tub, sweat on the treadmill, splurge on a new dress, or get away to the mountains for a weekend. Prayer groups and Bible studies help. God won’t load us up with more plates than we can handle, and with his enabling we will be able to keep them spinning. But sometimes we’re pressed hard to believe it. Something, we assume, has to give.
This is what happened to Greg Ericks and his wife. Too many hurts unresolved. Too many failures at communicating. When Ryan arrived on the scene, he unwittingly stoked the fire. A severe disability threw fuel on an already volatile situation. The flames licked higher, the pressure mounted, and the unbearable anguish began to choke faith out of Greg and his wife.
When pain lumbers through the front door, squats down in the middle of your life, and makes itself at home day after day, year after year, we can choke. We can crack. We erupt in anger.
GOOD ANGER
Spurned husbands aren’t the only ones who let off steam. Plenty of believers long before Greg Ericks have bordered on losing faith. Listen to the writer of Psalm 88:
You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.
Your wrath lies heavily upon me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
my eyes are dim with grief…
Why, O LORD, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?
From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death;
I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.
Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.
When God Weeps Page 15