15 Minutes
The experience of the sweetness of Sabbath is coming to be tempered by
awareness of the sorrow to surround this holy of days. Soon we will be deep
into the brokenness of the day that God sanctified, made holy. In this most
uplifting of times there will be a descent for the sake of ascent. We
experience others detaching from God as we are to draw closer. These fall
rather than choosing to rise. I am not talking about the fall of man. I am talking
about a falling away. Most who hold the Sabbath in holiness will have to “go
down” in the days to come. But this will be their “going up” to the promised
land. We will fall from favor of friends, of family, but ascend to be more like
Jesus. We will bear hardship and cry out to God because of those things to
be done to God’s people on His day of rest. But God hears our cries and
remembers us and brings us forth with a mighty hand and an outstretched
arm. Because we are low and we cry out, God hears us and lifts us out of
sorrow: descent for the sake of ascent.
Entering into covenant with God, was the event that formed us as a peculiar
people. It is in the peoplehood that God prepares us for an incomprehensibly
awful litany of tragedies that will be brought upon us. Our thoughts dive deep
into the world's sorrow and suffering and brokenness of the day. But our
hopes, our prayers launch us toward the Day of Awe. Out of our deepest
grief the light of truth brightens the soon return of our Redeemer. Authentic
spiritual life demands that we sit both with life's brokenness and life's
wholeness. A spirituality that's only "positive," only “feel good”, isn't real and
isn't whole. When we sit with what hurts, that's what enables us to rise.
Descent for the sake of ascent.
Looking at the world around us, it's easy to feel that everything is falling apart.
Migrant children torn from the arms of their parents and imprisoned in cages.
Hate crimes on the rise. People of color killed by police who are supposed
to be sworn to protect. Incidents of prejudice increasing: against religious
minorities, and against people of color. Our political system is broken.
International relations seem to be broken. There is brokenness everywhere
we look. Our work, the spiritual work of this moment in time, is twofold. One:
we have to resist the temptation to paper over the brokenness with platitudes
and pretty words. God has a greater plan we have to try to understand. And
two: we have to face the brokenness, even embrace the brokenness, and let
it fuel us to adjust our path, to correct our missteps. We feel what's lacking,
we ache to fill that void. In our sorrow there is to be no distance from the
divine Beloved. We are to draw nearer. Our distance is to be from the world.
Difficult days will be sown in tears, but the joy of reaping souls returns the
gladness of the spirit. We have a higher purpose. To heighten the hope of
experiencing the divine Presence. To balance the sorrow with that which is
affirmed in our hearts. We are going to struggle with sorrow. But as we
cultivate compassion for others we access the gratitude and joy of showing
Jesus in the life.
Jesus will not ask us why weren’t we as faithful as Abraham. Why didn’t we
wrestle like Jacob. Or why didn’t we serve like Joseph. He will ask why
weren’t we striving to be the best we could be...even in sorrow and joy. The
world today is a “black hole”. Black holes are powerful, but they pull energy
into themselves. God needs some suns. By contrast, suns are unique in
giving light...that give of themselves. The sorrows of today cannot be our
black holes of despair. We are called to radiate light, to reach out in
closeness for others even as we know that God gives days of adversity. We
are for God in this world to confront and overcome challenges; to choose,
when we are tested, to remain firm in our belief and trust in Him, in every
situation. Because we have a “why” to live for, we can bear any “how”. In all
our learning God teaches us that sorrow and joy, grief and rejoicing,
mourning and comfort, life and death, destruction and rebuilding are
intertwined. Our purpose is to endure. To believe in God and to trust that
every aspect of life has meaning and takes the course He has determined.
Remember, the greatest Sabbath of sorrow ended with the most blessed
expression of joy. Our faith is going to be stretched to the limit, when we are
asked to overcome the greatest of limitations, that is when we must
remember to praise God for the Sabbath.
We may want to understand that this is the time of the fulfillment of God’s
promises. The rhythms we have developed give stability amid the chaos: we
observe the Sabbath. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what
is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of
creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world. God finished
His work. And for us who keep the Sabbath, God has an even greater and
better plan. We will experience grief raw and overpowering. But we will cope
and reflect. The time is coming when we will keep the Sabbath in the midst
of pain, in the midst of sorrow, when the soul is seared, and throats are
tightened. This is when our faith moves us to the beginning of an awareness
of what eternity means. God has promised a greater reality beyond what we
are currently experiencing.
Our sorrow in the Sabbath is that which we share with our God. God has
great sorrow for the effect of sin on His people. His sorrow swells in our
unrighteousness. It is simply not in us—not in any of us—to have genuine,
authentic, righteousness without first having God’s nature within us. God
alone is without darkness, or impurity, or flaw.
The pause that God wove into the seven days is intentional. In observing it
we are thankful even in sorrow because it will forever prove that God is
right...we can obey. The Sabbath is the ever-mindful way of understanding
the awfulness of sin. What if our every thought were recorded on the
Sabbath...oh the sorrow.
The Sabbath is truth. And truth divides. Nothing divides like truth. Nothing
divides like Jesus. Not all search for the depth of truth in the word of God
and the deeper the truth, the deeper and wider the division. Wherein then is
the sorrow? In the slow drift of compromise of the truth. Jesus is Lord of the
Sabbath. Jesus is the Word. Jesus is truth. Any drift from the word is drift
from the Sabbath...it is drift from Jesus. People decide what truth fits them
best. Real truth requires a standard, a baseline to rest firmly upon so all know
where truth stands. Truth is not a series of shades of gray or just situations
where we decide what’s right based on how we feel. It is a black or white,
life-dividing, all or nothing issue. You either fall on the side of error or rise to
the truth of God.
Jesus wept. Because of our unbelief Jesus groaned in the spirit and was
troubled. We sorrow that we have no power but to give God’s word, to speak
of His amazing love to us. All that we can do is to plant the seed and trust
God to harvest that seed. It is difficult to trust in something that we cannot
see, but this is faith. We want so much for souls to be safe, for eyes to be
opened, for others to see their need for a savior in Jesus Christ who paid for
every sin. We sorrow because Jesus had to be our sin even as we refuse to
be his righteousness. It grieves God. Let no sorrow cause us to question our
faith.
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