Jesus, compassion, love and such

Jesus, gracias por...

My brother Bobby had surgery on his spinal cord a couple of weeks ago and I got to talk to him on the phone the other day for a few minutes. After talking with him, my heart hurt so bad because he is alone and in lots of pain. I wish that I could be there with him and here at the same time. It's hard to be away from him when I know he is in pain, and I always think that I can make things better (but I'm learning that I can't hold the world together with my two hands). I'm sure you've experienced the feeling of watching someone you love suffer, not just in physical ways, but emotionally and spiritually as well. When I experience it, it comes in the form of a heartwrenching pain in my chest. All I want to do is take their burdens away and make it possible for them to be whole and "all better". As I tried to go to sleep, my mind kept going back to him. I asked God for some way to make things easier for him. For some way to take...away....his....burdens....oh...the CROSS! I suddenly remembered the hope we have in Christ. God is not just a set of rules and doctrine we believe. He is real and his healing is actual and practical. I don't just mean bodily healing, which we see from time to time. I mean heart healing. He says to come to him if we are burdened, and he will give us rest. Seriously!

I wonder if it is not the same pain I experience in my chest that caused Jesus to knowingly make his way to Jerusalem, the garden, and then the cross. In the Bible, it says that Jesus asked God to "take this cup away" from him, but only if it was in God's will. Jesus knew that he came to Earth for that very reason, he had all the power to stop the torture. He was tempted, he could have chosen a different life. The pain he knew he would experience scared him, but not enough to overwhelm the real compassion he understood and felt for us. I wonder if his heart ached so badly that there wasn't room enough for overwhelming fear. Jesus' love for us led him to the cross, the only real way to take away burdens. He had to sacrifice himself for us, there was no other way. He didn't just die for our sins, to take them away so we wouldn't be "all that bad" anymore, he died so that we might be healed. That every broken part within you, affected deeply by your own sin and the sin of others toward you, has hope of being restored.

Jesus' action means that our sorrow can be lifted, and that every part of us that is wounded from rape or other sexual encounters or family violence or divorce or rejection or neglectful parents or anything else is repaired. Jesus felt sorrow. It was very real to him. He didn't remove sorrow from the world, we still see it, he just made real healing available to anyone. Jesus didn't come to take away sorrow immeadiately, he came to give it meaning. If we ask God to take away all sorrow, we ask God to take away the meaning of his sacrifice. Sorrow is here, and it is very real, difficult to swallow. But, we have a God who overcame it. who turned it over on itself to produce a hope equal in reality to the sorrow we experience in our lives.

I have experienced this healing in my life and the restoration of broken things continues here in Honduras, I know it won't be complete until heaven, but little pieces of it now are nice. It doesn't mean I am always happy or unburdened, it means experiencing life deeply, profound as the ocean and as high as the clouds. Joy and sorrow, together, make life meaningful.

This is what God is doing in me here. Teaching me that living with a broken heart isn't necessary, that he can take any bad thing and make it new. It's not fun thinking about the past or dealing with old memories, it's not easy, but it's worth it.

I hope this message hits your ears today in a way that makes it real, not just theoretical, not just something you've heard before. Don't just say that you know God, that you are "right" with him. Seek out healing. It's not about the rules or the doctrine or the religion, it's about the real hope that is available to you. It's like a feast of healing and you don't have to pay anything, you can't pay anything. Take it, it's free.

Isaiah 54 and 55

...el amor tan grande. Es un regalo precioso, mas que todo.