Scarred for Life

I have no patience these days with the Nietzschean cliché, 'That which does not kill us makes us stronger.' I’ve found that the deepest pain holds no meaning. It is not purifying. It is not ennobling. It does not make you a better human being. It just is.

All the worst pain does is reduce us to our most primal animal. We want it to stop. We want to survive. It short-circuits any sense of self, diminishes us to a bundle of biological reflexes.

NYTimes blog by way of the Fibromyalgia Blog.

I'm ashamed to add words to such a statement, but I've felt pain too. I've felt pain just like that - not recently, but those feelings. Since those days I've said, "That which does not kill us scars us for life."

And I'm scared to say anything about these words because there are those I love who are in that place right now. How dare I speak words into their pain that they cannot feel now? But I do remember. Really, I do. I remember and I think I would have wanted to hear both the words I've quoted above and the words I add below.

You're alive.

Ecclesiastes says a living dog is better than a dead lion, and pain taught me how right Solomon was. I wanted to be a noble lion in noble pain, but I survived because I realized I was a humble little mongrel held in the hands of the Living Lord. He preserved me because He loved me, and I lived because I finally found that grain of trust in His love.

I bear scars I'll nurse until I die, but only that long. There is a glory of life and trust, a love of God and man, my pain taught me and by which I'll be carried through all eternity.

Surviving such pain cripples us. Finding God scarred exactly as we were scarred, exactly because He loves us, metamorphosizes us. Pain cripples, but love transforms. The work love does with pain is divine.

Cry out to God and believe. His love for you is stronger than your agony. It is.

Jesus is.

Filling Up the Sufferings of the Christ

There are still more mysteries hidden in this breaking of the body of Christ. The greatest is likely to be that it is not only His body that is torn.

When we tear the bread, we show the sufferings of Christ for His own. But the bread is also a symbol of us, His body, the church.

1 Cor 10:17
For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.

And so, when we tear the bread, we equally symbolize our sufferings at the hands of His enemies and ours. There was a cup of suffering for the Lord Jesus, and there is a cup of suffering for us. The Lord refrained from allowing anyone to share in His cup, but there is a very real sense in which Christ's sufferings were not enough - there are sufferings yet to be paid, and we are privileged to join our Lord in those deep waters.

Col 1:24
Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church:

Php 3:10
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

So in our time of communion with the Lord and with the saints, we worship and declare the sufferings of the Lord, but we also declare our intent to join Him at the cross. We commune with His sufferings for us, but we also commune with Him as fellow sufferers.

1) We declare His death until He comes
2) We embrace the breaking of His body for us.
3) We declare our willingness to join Him in suffering.

His Body Torn for Us

In the Lord's Supper, there are a number of hidden mysteries.

One of them is hidden in the bread. Please allow me to leapfrog the obvious. We are, all of us, the grains of wheat that become the bread. This is why they call this meal, "communion." In it the bread shadows the church - a single, nourishing whole made from many.

1 Cor 10:16
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

And the bread explicitly shadows the body of Christ.

1 Cor 11:24
And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.

The bread that we share together should be whole at the start of the Supper, and it should be broken as it is passed around. We must tear His body to be healed in our own. The tearing of the bread is a moment of deep reflection, because there is no healing, no salvation, no hope for us if His body is not broken and torn for us 2000 years ago. It is no use being like Peter and forbidding the Lord to die. We must embrace His sacrifice and can offer only the sacrifice of thanksgiving to Him.

1) We declare His death until He comes
2) We embrace the breaking of His body for us.

Praise, Worship and Crow

Milly just posted a bit about whether Praise and Worship style music was good stuff or not. She chose as her example song, "Trading My Sorrows."

Now it so happens that song grates on my idealistic side. It has to be about as practically dodgy as any song I know, and I made my case "for" P&W but "against" Trading my Sorrows.

Wouldn't you know Trading My Sorrows would be the keystone of today's worship service?

And wouldn't you know I would love every minute of it?

It was our second string worship leader and they had done a couple songs with acoustic guitar and light drums. Then I brought up the slide for TmS. I chuckled and got ready for singing. Somehow I missed them switching over to a hardbody electric guitar and amping up the drums. :-)

They launched into the song, and the crowd kind of came along. After the first chorus, the pastor came up and read Isaiah 53 with passion, and had us start again. The crowd really responded well to his encouragement, and we had a great worship session.

I now have to declare that TmS is a very "worshipable" song, and it got to me good today. :-)

A quick song

Any edits before I present to the group on Thursday for edits?

In Him there is no night
In Him there is no, "No"
Death fell before His might
And where he's gone we go.

He came to save His own
He came to seek the lost
His face set like a stone
He paid each stripe we cost

This world won't care for me
It knows I'm not from here
And when life's end I see
We'll neither shed one tear

To kingship He's been raised
His kingdom we've become
In blood our trail He's blazed
His love has overcome

The Lord's Prayer in Songs

Last night I was feeling particulary verklempt and spent, so I did the Lord's Prayer with a harmonica. It was really nice. So, I tag anyone still reading my ramblings to let us all know how you would do the Lord's Prayer in songs.

Our Father which art in Heaven
[I've Got a Mansion Just Over the Hilltop]
Hallowed be Thy Name
[Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Sweetest Name I Know]
Thy kingdom come
[Crown Him With Many Crowns]
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
[Make My Life a Prayer to You]
Give us this day our daily bread
[I Know Whom I Have Believed]
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
[Just As I Am]
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
[My Soul has Found a Resting Place]

Easter Thanks

I am one of those people who sees an empty glass with a little bit of water in it, a walking raincloud if ever there were one. When provoked to count my blessings, I usually end up in tears.

But, in the invisibles ...

In the realm of the Lamb, even rainclouds are rich, richer than the wildest pessimism.

I am crippled, and yet there is One Who never passed me by. He stretched out the right hand of His love, and restored me. He took me into His house and fed me at the greatest expense to Himself. And if you will understand my meaning, He fed me His last two mites.

He had everything to give, and they were things I would have bubbled with delight to receive - things that would have cost Him nothing. Like so many stylish lovers, He could have promised me the moon and stars, but He could deliver. He gave something else.

He was upright and good, and could have enriched me to satisfy His own infinite standards. I would have honored His Name, had He blessed me to keep His robe of holiness white and perfectly starched. He lifted me for another reason.

When there was no obligation that could touch Him, and when I was His enemy, He came and walked beside me. He clothed Himself with the body of my struggles, and labored under the needs that overwhelm me. For only two reasons, He came to be with me.

He loved His Father Who called Him to such obedience. And He loved me.

He suffered more with me than I will ever suffer alone, because He wanted to know me, and be with me. He gave Himself because He found me valuable. He treasured me as He did His own Father, and He endured the cross to join me to Himself forever. And He will never want to leave me.

In all the world, there is only one treasure, love. If a man would give all his riches for love, and trade an empire for love, it would be utterly condemned. And yet the Master gave love to me above a hundred lesser things I would have wanted.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.