suffering | Elaine Olsen

"… live on"

May 12, 2010

{For you, friend, you know who you are.}

“… and yet we live on.” (2 Corinthians 6:9)

My right hand is aching this morning. Truth be known, it ached all night… a sharp twinge located in the center of my hand, just below my middle knuckle. I’ve felt it before. It flares up from time to time when my fingers and keyboard collide at a rapid, unrelenting rate. This has been one of those times for me… one of those weeks that has authored an unusual amount of connection between my fingertips and my computer. I don’t mind it much; I really don’t think about it often, especially while in mid-typing mode. But when the computer screen grows dim and the lights go out and my hands find their rest at my side, the pain sets in reminding me of an important truth regarding the call of Jesus Christ upon my life.

Kingdom work is sometimes flanked by the painful ache of a sacred obedience.

If we are Christians, if we dare to name ourselves with the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, then we are to be heartily invested in his kingdom business. We don’t get a pass when it comes to doing God’s work. Vocationally speaking, we may hold a variety of titles behind our names, but spiritually speaking, the only holding of our hearts that matters is the One who titles us as his. And when we get this—when we finally arrive at the place of realizing that all of our earthly endeavors are meant to be the fertile soil upon which the King sows his seed—then we readily accept the fullness of that calling, ills and aches included.

The Apostle Paul understood the strain between a painful ache and a sacred obedience. He willingly chose his “ache,” chaining himself to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and believing that every temporal pain of his flesh was achieving for him an eternal glory that far outweighed them all. At any point along the way, Paul could have chosen otherwise… could have freed himself from the physical and emotional misery that invaded his flesh. Instead, he persevered in great travail and suffering so that the church might know the culminating truth of the cross. So that the church would grow. So that you and I, some 2000 years down the road, might know what it is to “live on” despite the carnage and chaos going on around us and in us. But don’t take my word on it; take his…

“Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way:
in great endurance;
in troubles, hardships and distresses;
in beatings, imprisonments and riots;
in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger;
in purity, understanding, patience and kindness;
in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love;
in truthful speech and in the power of God;
with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left;
through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report;
genuine, yet regarded as impostors;
known, yet regarded as unknown;
dying, and yet we live on;
beaten, and yet not killed;
sorrowful, yet always rejoicing;
poor, yet making many rich;
having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” (2 Corinthians 4:4-10).

I’d never seen it before… Paul’s “live on.” When reading this familiar passage I’m tempted to stay mired in the pain of it all, in imagining how my own life fits into the litany of sufferings he vividly details in his letter to the church at Corinth. Yet it’s there… two simple words that admonished the readers back then and the readers right now to “live on.” To not stay entrenched in the ache of our sacred obedience to Jesus Christ, but to “live on” in spite of it. To press on to take hold of all of that for which Christ has taken hold of us. To keep putting one spiritual foot of faith in front of the other until we press through to victory and can realize, even as Paul realized, that we possess everything, even though the world labels our possession as nothing.

The painful ache of a sacred obedience.

Some of you are living your ache today. Some of you are all too familiar with Paul’s suffering because yours, at some level, mirrors his. You may not be locked in a prison cell or experiencing the physical trauma of a flogging, but I imagine there are many of you who feel the emotional and spiritual intensity of some chains and some wearing and tearing away of your flesh that feels comparable in their depth to Paul’s.

Some of you are expending a lot of your faith on behalf of God’s kingdom gain while seeing little results. Some of you are standing on the front lines of a tenacious, spiritual battle where the line is wearing thin and your reserves have run for cover leaving you alone to fight it through to victory. Some of you are tired; sleepless nights have claimed your good sense and the energy for a new day has long since been usurped by the previous night’s wandering of your mind. Some of you are hungry; a famine of soul is crying out for the bread of heaven, yet the manna seems to have missed your acreage during its morning dispensation. Some of you are working hard, enduring long, speaking truth, and loving lavishly; still and yet, the payoff seems minimal and our Father’s notice all the more. You feel “unknown” and as an “imposter” upon the soil beneath your feet.

I hear you. I feel you. I cannot fully understand what it’s like to be you, but like you, I, too, have known moments, days, and seasons of feeling the painful ache of a sacred obedience. I cannot perfectly aid your comprehension as it pertains to the questions and “whys” behind your struggle, but I can, like the Apostle Paul, give to you a couple of words that have carried me through a great many aches in my past.

Live on.

Don’t die mid-stream. Live on. Press through. Receive everything as if it were happening to our Lord Jesus Christ and then, live on. For of this I am certain… you are known by our Heavenly Father. He sees your sacred obedience and regards you and your faith as genuine in his eyes. If you remain faithful to live on in Jesus, despite the carnage going on around you, then there is nothing in your past, present, or future that will come to you that will be able to undercut the witness of God’s kingdom via your flesh. Nothing. You can live on because Christ lived on. So did Paul; so have countless, unnamed others who have gone before you, who will follow after you, and who, in this moment, stand beside you to cheer you on toward victory.

I am one of them, friends, and I need your encouragement today just as much as you need mine. We’re on the kingdom road together; it’s no mistake that we have found one another in this season of living. God intends for us to be here… to love one another in the strength and power of his Holy Spirit and to live on together until we move home to heaven. It is but a moment from now… a single breath that will transport us into our “next” where our living on will live on in living color and before the very face of God. Believing and fully trusting in that moment, friends, brings me rich perspective for every temporal ache I experience that is connected to God’s kingdom end. Even so I pray, Lord Jesus, keep me obedient.

Keep me obedient to live on. Keep my friends as well. Amen. So be it.

peace for the journey,

the "exactly-why-we-need-Easter" post…

April 1, 2010

Would that I could escape the sin of this world.

I would, but I can’t. It surrounds me, invites me, terrorizes me, and reminds me of everything that is wrong about this world. Read about it in the headlines, see it on the television, hear it in the Wal-Mart, wherever we live and move and have our being, sin is the order of the day. A blatant and firm reminder of exactly why Jesus and his cross are needed, not just 2000 years ago, but today.

Today.

My heart is a tangled-up, jumbled-up mess this morning. I went to bed a mess; woke up a mess all because of a single headline that has, yet again, gripped my emotions with all the fury and fuss of hell’s intention. A seven-year-old girl has fallen prey to the sadistic schemes of the enemy, brought about through the hands of her step-sister and several young men intent on satisfying their sinful lusts via her innocence. I’ll spare you the details. They’re enough to turn your stomach, and if you’re stomach remains upright and unturned by them, then your heart has grown cold, calloused and unmoved by the sin-sick condition of this world.

This isn’t my happy Easter post; friends. Would that it could be. This is my exactly-why-we-need-Easter post. It would be nice if Easter dresses and egg hunts were the focal point of my heart this day, but they aren’t. Instead, I’m thinking about the unsanitized version of Easter—the one that’s ugly, repugnant to the senses, and that steps all over our need to keep Easter lovely and between the lines of our religious décor. As Christians, we are sometimes tempted to skip over the fuss and fury of Friday’s hell in order to arrive at Sunday’s conclusion.

I understand. I’m a Sunday-conclusion kind of gal. It’s how I like to live my faith, in victory and full of the conquering truth of the resurrection. But to arrive there without taking ample pause to reflect on what our Jesus went through in order to allow us sweet victory, is to keep sin’s ugliness separated from grace’s beauty. And that simply cannot be done. They come as a package deal, sin and grace, grace and sin. Without one, there is no need for the other. Life could simply live as it lives with no consequences, no rules, no guidelines except the one that says, “If it feels good, do it and let the chips fall where they may.” Apparently what felt good for at least seven men this past Sunday was a seven-year-old girl, and the chips? Well, they’ve fallen on tender soil—the broken soil of a young life—the consequences of which will be staggering in the end.

We don’t live in a world free from sin and the need for grace therein. As Christians, we sometimes forget our need for grace; the world has certainly forgotten its need for grace, but God has never been neglectful with his remembrance. He knows what we need, even as he knew it 2000 years ago, even as he planned for it pre-Eden on the front side of Genesis.

It’s hard for me to think about God and the “all-knowing” part of his nature—if he saw this past Sunday coming, even from the very beginning, then why did he allow it? Why make her pay for the sins of others? Why should she (the least of the least) harbor the fullness of carnality when she didn’t ask for it? Someone should have loved her better, watched over her better, made sure her “better” was of paramount importance. But “better” she didn’t receive, and now she is left to mourn what’s been lost.

I don’t have perfect answers for my questions, but I serve a perfect God, and by faith, I’m choosing to believe in those answers. I may not receive them on this side of eternity, but if I didn’t believe they’d one day be available to me, then I’d given up on faith a long time ago. Why? Because my almost forty-four years have afforded me plenty of occasions for questions and for the sacred mystery attached to their answers. There are simply some wrestlings of the heart that exceed my understanding at this point. Perhaps with spiritual maturity, I’ll grow in my understanding, but for now, all I can do is concede truth to Jesus and to look toward Sunday.

For Sunday is coming.

Soon.

Resurrection is upon us, closer now than it has ever been.

A Sunday conclusion that reads sinless, sanitized, saved by grace and grace alone.

Grace for all, even them—those seven, Lord—the exact reason why you could not skip over the hell of Friday to get to the hallelujah of Sunday. Oh the depths of where you’ve been for me, for them, for her, for the world. I cannot explain that kind of love and grace. I can only receive it, and in turn, Lord, out of that receiving… give it.

Even to them.

This is the conquering truth of Sunday’s conclusion.

Forgiveness.

Not as the world gives, Father, but as you give.

Even so, make my heart a conduit of yours.

So be it.

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A Hurting Heart…

July 10, 2009

I suppose I owe you post. It’s been a few days; still and yet, I’m struggling for my words. My heart isn’t here.

My heart is there, underneath a blue tent that shelters the freshly dug grave of my friend, Beth.

My heart is in a hospital room, where Beth’s daughter has just, this morning, given birth to a little girl who will only know her grandmother through the memories given to her by others.

My heart is in a home where a husband walks in isolation from his bride of twenty-five years, bumping into remembrances at every turn.

My heart is with two parents who valiantly and gracefully walked hand in hand to bury their daughter; a walk no parent should have to make.

My heart is with extended family, brothers, in-laws, aunt and uncles and cousins enough to fill a sanctuary—all of whom are trying to make sense out of a “life gone too soon.”

My heart is there, everywhere but here. Still and yet, I come and offer it to you for you are my friends, also. I imagine that there are many of you who are walking your own road of grief this day. Life is dishing you out a heavy portion of pain, and you are unsure about what to do with it; how to manage it; where to stuff it, and how to move on from it.

You walk in good company. You are not alone in your weariness of heart of soul. Like you … like so many others … I am walking with my pain. And while it pales in comparison to the grief of a family who knew Beth longer and loved her deeper, it still hurts and leaves me with a few lingering questions.

I won’t tackle these questions today; at least not publicly. Some conversations are best reserved for the private intimacy between Father and child. My faith isn’t based on my questions. My faith supersedes my questions. The questions are simply the road map God uses to draw my heart closer to his.

Graciously, he allows them. Humbly I ask them. Patiently, I wait for the answers. I believe they will come; if not fully, then with at least enough understanding to carry me through to the other side, when “partial” will give way to “complete.”

I can live with that, friends, because I firmly believe that when it’s time for me to “know,” I’ll know. Until then, God’s peace is my guiding comfort. He’s ready and available to me for the asking.

Thus, I ask for peace to cover my questions, my hurts and the hurts of Beth’s loved ones. I don’t ask for “down the road,” I ask for now … for this moment. God is faithful to supply his touch one moment at a time until they collect and gather and become an hour lived in peace. An entire day walked in peace. A week, a month, a year, a lifetime that punctuates with the truth that God’s peace is possible, is real and is active in the hearts of those who bow low enough and long enough to drink from its well.

I’m bowing today. There is peace to be tasted from God’s cup. May you know his ample portion as well. As always,

Peace for the Journey,

~elaine

The Painful Truth

April 2, 2009

“Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:5-6).

Her question paused my spirit last night. Not because I wasn’t prepared for its arrival, but rather because of the pain that was attached to its speaking. It is a pain that often fastens itself to questions that root the deepest—questions that linger hard and long in the murky waters of uncertainties. Questions that surround a soul with a needful longing for clarity. Questions that require our participation because our minds and our hearts are equally invested in the answers therein.

It’s not easy to entreat them … to be the recipient of hard questions. Still and yet, it is a privilege to be trusted with their asking, for in doing so, we are given the rare privilege of influence. Of speaking something of worth and value into a pain that is intent on consumption … on paralysis, on keeping a soul from moving beyond its confinement.

That is what I faced last night. A suffering moment that required a wisdom beyond my years and my limited understanding about why life sometimes seems to portion out raw and rough and rude, almost always with inadequate notice. Her question doesn’t breathe in isolation. I’ve been receiving many of them as of late. They seem to find me, despite my inability to “fix” anything to the contrary. And last night, as I tossed and turned and tumbled her question over in my mind, I had a thought as it pertains to this “answering” of pain. It has stayed with me throughout the day.

Pain deserves the truth. Not preferences.

Read it again, and pause to consider its worth.

Pain deserves the truth. Not preferences.

You and I are living in a pain-saturated society. If not our personal pain, then the pain of a people we love … a people we commune with, celebrate life with, go to church with, work with, shop with, “internet” with, share our resources with, partake in this world with. We are a people living with pain’s insistence, and when it comes knocking, it warrants our respect, our notice, and our involvement. It means to do so.

Pain’s knocking is our invitation to involvement. Rarely do we welcome its intrusion, but almost always are we forced to swallow its intention. Thus, pain deserves more than our menial attempts at soothing. Pain deserves more than our coddling preferences that band-aid the ache without ever touching the wound. Pain deserves more than our religious speak and our fast forward approaches to its release.

Pain deserves the truth.

And lest we think that any truth will do (for many are prone in their thinking that truth seeds relative), there is only one truth worthy of a pain’s trust … a pain’s receiving … a pain’s taking. It is not a truth embedded in philosophy. A truth not formulated by man’s attempt at having life make sense. A truth not vetted or promoted on the talk show circuit. A truth not rooted in a guru or a mantra or a set of rules for “becoming a better you.”

None of these “truths” are ample enough, strong enough, steady and sure enough to answer the problem of pain. They fall flat and soothe simple and, at the end of the day, inaccurately treat the intrusion of suffering.

Pain deserves better. Pain deserves the truth; not contradictions. Not maybes. Not a #1 best-seller, but rather, it deserves the certitude and confidence of all creation. Pain deserves the smoldering wick of an eternal flame—a truth that was lit on the front side of Genesis and that continues its watch through until forever. And that truth, my friends, does indeed exist. Truth has a name. It was given to Him before the very foundation of the world.

Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God.

The Word made flesh, living among us for a season; living within us for always through the power of his abiding and Holy Spirit. He is only Truth who is worthy of a pain’s holding. He is the only Truth who understands the depths of a pain’s intention.

Thus, when pain finds its way to our door, the only Truth that serves truthful, that proves useful, that lasts lasting, is the One who is well familiar with our griefs and our sufferings (Isaiah 53:3). He walked the road of suffering so that we could better walk ours. And if for some reason we think that our road should walk pain free, then we have missed a deeply rooted tenet of our faith.

To take up our cross and follow after Jesus is to resolutely walk the path of his intention (Luke 9:23-24, 1 Peter 4:12-13). To be like Jesus, we are called to walk like Jesus. And His walk, fellow pilgrims, was painted with suffering. Not suffering for suffering’s sake, but suffering for our sake, so that when it, too, becomes ours in smaller measure, we will better understand how to walk it through.

With a Truth that is transparent and real and willing to share in our sufferings and with a purpose that often times hides its intention but is, nevertheless, present and profitable for our sacred transformation.

Pain deserves the Truth. It deserves our notice, and then it deserves our release to the Truth. We may never understand pain’s grip on this side of eternity. We may never have the perfect words to offer on behalf of pain’s intrusion into the lives of others. But if we hold the light of Jesus Christ in our hearts, then we hold enough … more than enough … to lead us onward in victory.

Pain doesn’t get the final word in our many matters, friends. Neither do our preferences. Truth does. Thus, when pain comes knocking and brings her questions accordingly, may we always find our words and our trust anchored in the eternal Flame who lights us home and burns us brightly as we go. Thus, I pray…

Seed your Truth within my flesh, Father. Root Him deeply and burn Him brightly, regardless of the suffering going on around me and in me. Where there are questions, answer them with Truth. Where there are tears, dry them with Truth. Where there is suffering, cover it with Truth, and where there is doubt, replace it with the Truth. Keep my heart and my tongue ready with the Truth, so that on all occasions your Truth stands at the podium and my understanding submits to Truth’s shadows. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, always be found acceptable in thy sight, Oh Lord, my Strength, my Redeemer, and my absolute Truth. Amen.

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