12. The Songs of Suffering
The Songs of Suffering
Observe the expression of abandonment about the wild rose calyx as time goes on, and it begins to grow towards the end for which it has had to count all things but loss. The look of dumb emptiness has gone. It is flung back joyously now, for simultaneously with the new dying a richer life has begun to work at its heart—so much death, so much life.
GOD’S ULTIMATE PURPOSE in all suffering is joy. Scripture is full of songs of praise that came out of great trials. The feast of the Passover commemorated God’s deliverance from the long slavery Israel had endured in Egypt. The last day of the Passover was to be a pilgrim feast, according to God’s command, so that they could tell their sons what God had done for them when He brought them out of Egypt. The sacrifice of the firstborn male of every animal and the redemption of every firstborn son were signs of this great delivery, sacrifices of thanksgiving.
When God miraculously saved His people from the chariots of the army of Egypt by driving back the sea all night with a strong east wind, the people put their faith in Him and in His servant Moses, and all sang a song together.
I will sing to the Lord, for he has risen up in triumph;
the horse and his rider he has hurled into the sea.
The Lord is my refuge and my defence,
he has shown himself my deliverer.
He is my God, and I will glorify him. (Ex 15:1-2)
The song goes on for pages, recounting the Lord’s marvelous power, love, and mercy. Miriam the prophetess took up a tambourine and the women danced while Miriam sang. The greater the peril they had been in, the greater the joy of deliverance.
The terrors and privations of their long journey through the wilderness had to be endured, but how much more wonderful the promised land would be as a result. Who can enjoy the fire who has never been cold, or cold water who has never been thirsty?
The heartbreak of the prodigal’s father turned into dancing, singing, and feasting when the son came home.
The angels in heaven sing more joyfully over the repentance of a single sinner than over ninety-nine who need no repentance.
The woman who loses a small coin is so ecstatic to find it that she calls in her friends to rejoice with her.
And the virgin Mary, a humble village girl, sings her Magnificat:
“Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord, rejoice, rejoice, my spirit, in God my Savior; so tenderly has he looked upon his servant,
humble as she is….” (LK 1:46-48)
I read a little story by a priest who suffers from tinnitus, an incurable and very annoying buzzing in the ears. Because he believes that we are responsible for our own happiness, he has elected to regard this “little problem,” as he calls it, as an opportunity rather than a curse.
“Waking up in the morning to the sound of a thousand crickets is not pleasant. Thank God, during the day I’m busy and I seldom advert to it, but the din never stops.”
Instead of offering canned advice to others he simply tells how he crossed over from a frantic search for relief to a relatively calm condition of acceptance. He believes that the greatest honor he can give to God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of His love. His happiness he regards as a sign of gratitude to God, so nothing must spoil it; therefore he thinks of tinnitus as a friend, not an enemy. He pretends that the shrill sound in his head is an echo of the song of the universe, as all the earth blesses the Lord—the birds, the rivers, the howling winds.
“I let the buzzing in my ears become my unceasing prayer of praise. ‘Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him, singing for joy.’ ”
It isn’t the problems that determine our destiny. It’s how we respond.
The knowledge also that our sufferings are taken up into Christ’s is a source of joy. Indeed, the thought of His cross and what it did for me is in times of deep sorrow the only pure joy I can know. We may not feel like shaking tambourines and dancing when we are nailed to a bed by pain. Yet the pain itself may become an offering when we know that we are allowed to help to complete, in our poor human flesh, “the full tale of Christ’s afflictions still to be endured, for the sake of his body which is the church” (Col 1:24). It is Christ in us that makes this possible. Once we have opened ourselves to grace, then Christ Himself takes up His dwelling in us. If we suffer, He suffers. We are His body here on earth. This poor human flesh, yours and mine, is where Jesus now lives, so pain bestows on us the incomprehensible privilege of helping to carry to completion the quota He must endure. As we accept this burden with thankfulness, we enter into an ever-deepening fellowship of His sufferings—but let us never forget that it was His own perfect and complete sacrifice of Himself that opened to us this possibility. Because of that we become His dwelling place. Ought not this to make us glad? Isn’t this reason enough to make our sufferings a sacrifice of praise?
No matter how far along our spiritual pilgrimage we may have come, we need to be shown again and again that humble, ordinary things can be very holy and very full of God. They are not “religious” things, they are plain, earthly things. We may hope for visions and revelations and “wonderful experiences,” forgetting that the context of the revelation of God to each of His children is exactly where that one is, here, on earth, in this house, this kitchen, at this stove, in this family, or at this desk, in this schoolroom, on this tractor or assembly line, this perhaps (to us) very unsatisfactory arrangement of things.
The wife of a long-distance truck driver wrote that she was so thankful for what she called an “unusual, wonderful marriage.” Her husband has had this job for two and a half years, but each time he comes home “it’s like a new romance. I empathize with the single mothers, going to functions alone, making decisions, changing the car tire, going to bed alone. The loneliness is hard, but my heart would break over the bitterness of divorce and the permanence of death.
“I rode with him for two weeks this summer and there is nothing romantic about long-haul trucking. How lonely to sit in a restaurant alone, or have a weekend layover and not be able to attend church. He spends time every day soaking up the Word (something it is hard to find time for at home)…. Maybe I’m wrong. It seems that God has given us special grace, and I cannot see that these areas [learning to take hands off and trusting God] could have been exercised and strengthened in any other way.”
I don’t think she is wrong. The happiness they have found is because of the strain put on it by the man’s job, or rather, I should say because of their response to the strain.
But will this work for me? someone may ask. Abandonment to the Lord always works—not in the same way for everyone, of course. He deals with us according to His intimate knowledge of who we are and what we need to bring us into conformity with the image of His Son. It is conformity to that image that God is working on all the time, and what an encouragement to me it is to know that He is not going to give up on me until it is accomplished! We shall be like Him. That is His promise.
A spiritual outlook brings peace. “Those who live on the level of our lower nature have their outlook formed by it, and that spells death; but those who live on the level of the spirit have the spiritual outlook, and that is life and peace.… You are on the spiritual level, if only God’s Spirit dwells within you; and if a man does not possess the Spirit of Christ, he is no Christian” (Rom 8:5-6, 9).
When I think of the lovely picture Lilias Trotter gives us of the wild rose calyx, joyously flung back as the new dying brings a richer living, I think of two women I know who illustrate that. One of them, very much a woman of her generation, could not imagine giving up her job, her prestige, and her freedom in order to be a mother. That was too high a price to pay. But as she grew in grace she saw that giving herself to God meant giving Him everything—death to herself. Then He showed her that motherhood was His call, and when she obeyed she found not only peace but joys she had not dreamed of. Her yielding (a “death) meant that a richer life had begun to work in her heart, and wistful thoughts of all she had left behind (the “petals” that the calyx has let go) were forgotten in her happy embracing of that life.
St. Paul told the Philippian Christians that they were his pride and joy, proof that he had not run his race in vain. “But if my lifeblood is to crown that sacrifice which is the offering up of your faith, I am glad of it, and I share my gladness with you all. Rejoice, you no less than I, and let us share our joy” (Phil 2:17-18).
The other woman has been devastated not once but several times by Christian men who gave every indication of loving her and intending to marry her, and then have “ridden off into the sunset” with somebody else. She has chosen to surrender all her wounds to her Lord, believing against all odds that His purpose is love. She has made Amy Carmichael’s prayer her own:
Lord, more and more
I pray Thee, or by wind or fire,
Make pure my inmost heart’s desire
And purge the clinging chaff from off the floor.
But when in me myself would rise
And long for something otherwise,
Then, Holy One, take sword and spear and slay.
Oh, stay near by,
Most patient Love, till, by Thy grace,
In this poor silver, Thy bright face
Shows forth in clearness and serenity.
What will it be
When, like the lily or the rose,
That in my flowery garden
I shall be flawless, perfect, Lord, to Thee?
(Rose from Brier, London: SPCK, 1950, p. 180)