Lost in the Current

(a preface: I realize this is a big departure from the last post and I will be continuing to post segments of the children's story, so forgo this one if you need to or bear with me)


A thought. Today at church I was listening to everyone around me sing as usual. The music leader changed the key and started into “O the Deep Deep Love of Jesus” a song I have always loved, if not for the words than for the fact that is in a minor key. The song is solemn, like a dirge. When I hear it, I hear it as a song of mourning. But when you listen to the words, its all about the love of God and how wonderful it is. I struggled to sing it today, not for the first time though. The more I think the harder it is for me see God’s love. I can imagine that someday when ALL creation is redeemed I will see God’s love brilliantly. But lately no matter what good I see in life, there is even more bad to outweigh it. It’s hard for me to think, let alone say God is love when I am watching this suffering.

Sure I’ve seen God’s love in my life. I have been more than blessed. But what about everyone else? What about those in East Africa who are starving to death? To just smile and say “God has a plan and he is love” is like spitting in their face. The reality, those children you see pictures of with their bones sticking out: they will never experience that love in this life. They will die. Their existence will only be marked by suffering and the case is the same for many other people. It’s on their behalf that I can’t see this love. You can say it’s sin..but do you really think of that child as a sinful being? In reality has it ever done anything so wrong as to deserve such a fate, such a life? So how does it work. I can’t just shake it off and say, “Some things cannot be explained. In the end it will all be explained.” I can’t say that, because as much as I believe in an ultimate end, I also believe in the present. I believe that Kingdom of God is here and now. So where is that love? As a person who works in the "helping field" and who is striving for social justice, I am daily confronted with circumstances and events that are devoid of good...that are not fair. Where is this love?

One could say it’s in us. That God has placed us to be those agents of love. But in some way that seems to imply that he has withdrawn and watches as we do our best to bear the burden of love to a bleeding screaming world. That just doesn’t work.

But I had this thought, that maybe that hymn has something figured out that all those joyful praise songs can’t quite put a finger on. There is sorrow in love. There is pain in love. It’s strange to sing about love in minor key with a sorrowful heart. But for those of you who have experienced pain, who truly know what it means to suffer. Than you can understand. There is love out there, but it is not untainted by sorrow.

You can’t say that love brings only good things. IT doesn’t. But as I listened to the words and music, I understood a reality of sorrowful love. That cries and dies with us. That sits in our spirit and understands our deepest sorrows. I can’t explain the bad. I will never call it good. I will never try to cheapen a person’s sorrow with a bandaid of “This is for a reason.” There is no reason in suffering, there is no reason in hardship. Don’t try and tell me otherwise. Instead I will partake in the sorrow, as I believe that God does. I truly can’t say that I understand God’s role in this world. The more I ask, the less I know. But I hope in love. I hope in a God that will not turn a blind eye to suffering. I don’t know why he doesn’t change it, why he doesn't intervene. I wish I could demand the answer, I wish I could find a way. But all I have this. That the pain I feel, he feels too. There has to be more to it than that. But for now, it's all I have.