As we celebrate Thanksgiving and enter the Christmas season, there may be some for whom thankfulness, trust, and love are difficult to embrace right now. Perhaps this week devoted to thankfulness involves trials for you, or pain, or loss. How do we navigate through love and loss and maintain hearts of trust, even gratitude, to our sovereign God? Perhaps the following article, written by one of our church members, could be of help to you this week as you seek to fill your heart with thankfulness to Him who bore our pain, who walks beside, and who reigns above.
"Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
-Mr. Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
It is amazing how you stumble upon things sometimes. The above quote came from a forum post in an online discussion; I did not look it up myself. The quote is up there because it completely summarizes the whole of this note. God is not safe, in a sense. He is good, and He is the King.
To the one wishing to save his life, God is utterly not safe. If it were not for the promises, the last part of Romans 8 would be utterly terrifying. The Christian life is a call to take up your cross and die; this is not safe at all. Going across a room and talking to a stranger in an attempt at getting to the gospel is not safe, for the future is unknown. One has to leave all the worrisome possibilities entirely up to God and brave the results and let come what may.
Sin abounds, and Christians are sent into this sinful world as sheep to be slaughtered. We are sent to love and suffer leaving our heartbreaks in the Great Physician’s good hands. Love does not just take the form of witnessing. It appears in silent obscure prayers known only to God. It appears in a heartfelt “thank you” when one has been served. It appears, at times, in the public sphere in well prepared messages from God’s Word. It appears in the sacrifice of a mom, spending so much time raising a child from infancy onward, neglecting and sacrificing so very much. It appears in a dad, who has to be the one to give the hard lessons to a stubborn child. It appears in so many avenues. Often it appears very imperfectly, but it appears.
But love is not safe! Sacrifice is not safe at all! A child raised from infancy rebels against all that is good. Prayers seem to not get answered. Deeds and affection for another are rejected. A soul-crushing blow is always possible at the end of an open heart. Time and investment is always at such risk. Love is continually misunderstood and misconstrued. Teaching is only received with apathy. What God has called us to be is not safe; but He has also called us to trust Him knowing that in all the pain, affliction, weakness, and heartbreaks we are still more than conquerors (Rom. 8:37).
A friend of mine once posted a quote that was one of those good, wonderful, punch-in-the-gut types of statements. It came from C. S. Lewis, and I finally found it myself. The quote comes in the context of Lewis reflecting upon the sorrow and anguish of Augustine:
"Even if it were granted that insurances against heartbreak were our highest wisdom, does God Himself offer them? Apparently not. Christ comes at last to say 'Why hast thou forsaken me?'
"There is no escape along the lines St. Augustine suggests. Nor along any other lines. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
"I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God's will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. It is like hiding the talent in a napkin and for much the same reason: 'I knew thee that thou wert a hard man.' Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness. If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthly beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he has not. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it." (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves)
Not much can be said after that! He is not safe, but He is good, and He is the King. I confess that I see that “self-protective lovelessness” all too often in my own life. Fear seems to be born from a lack of control; and it seems that all too often there is a death grip upon the desire to control; and the future is so enigmatic and frustratingly uncontrollable...
My dad, after a disagreement where I held to a form of all-encompassing sovereignty that he rejected, gave me one of those loving verbal punches in the gut. He essentially said, “Caleb, you really believe that God is sovereign over all things? Well, you certainly don’t live like it; you aren’t trusting that God is in control.”
But instead of letting thoughts get mired in a flushing toilet of self—getting depressed and discouraged—Jesus still appears in the biblical account. His appearance redirects the selfward gaze to the solution. He was One despised and rejected. No heartbreak or pain that I will ever go through can compare to the crushing that He experienced upon that tree: cursed, mocked, scorned, turned away from...
"He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed." (Isa 53:3-5 ESV)
No, God is not safe, but He is good, and He is king. And just as the Christian is called upon by God to take up his cross and die (identifying with the death of Jesus), so also the Christian is called upon God to recognize his life on the other end of this death (identifying with the resurrection of Jesus). What this means is that there is no heartache, sorrow, pain, and weakness (in the context of dying through loving) that God will not take and renew.
"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh."
(2 Cor 4:7-11 ESV)
Yes, the risk is there; the pain is inevitable. If you practice self-protectiveness, then the pain will be in the form of the “what might have been.” If you throw your heart out there, then the pain will be in the form of its being broken. I do not think “keeping your heart with all diligence” is properly used in conjunction with self-protective lovelessness. But then even if death is at work, so also is life at work. The heart may be struck down, but not destroyed. Paul loved the Corinthian believers, and yet they were rejecting him and the Messiah he was trying to emulate in various ways. There is a reason why he wrote 1 Corinthians 13 and 15! The first could be summarized by the word “love;” the second could be summarized by the word “resurrection.”
“I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less?" (2 Cor 12:15 ESV)
So, as always, I’m faced with the reality that I need to follow in His steps and by His grace. God help me, for I am utterly not sufficient for these things. Lord, I believe; help my unbelief! I certainly don’t write this as one who has achieved the above, and I’ve made far less progress in this than others, but it is something that I need and must strive for. Only by His grace...