Sorrow's Power

Our study into Wes Yoder’s book, the “Bond of Brothers” stalled out on the topic of sorrow being the hand that shapes us. Most of the time, our men are very animated and talkative about even the most embarrassing parts of their life, but within this discussion, it is almost as if we’ve stepped into forbidden territory.  Are the issues of betrayal, rejection, and pain too much to admit to?  Is Wes Yoder right about men covering up their deepest sorrows with small talk, and religious duty, or have these men truly found the God of all comfort?  Have they discovered the river of life that flows from heaven’s throne and washes clean those who step into its healing flow?  Is there nothing to say, because they’ve already given it to the one who knows, and cares for them?  Is this the point where we split ways with Brother Wes, and admit that some things are best given to the Lord, and left alone?  As I looked around the room at all of the men whom I have come to love like a brother, I believe the latter is true. 

However, for many, the depths of sorrow are never completely plumbed until the moment a mind closes the gate to the pain from which it springs. Insanity, madness, and cruelty are the fruits of a man crushed by sorrows. If you want to explore the power of faith, remove hope.  Hopelessness becomes self-sustaining, till once vital men become shadows, empty husks, without joy, breathing, but dying in the quicksand of their own blackened imaginations.  T.S. Eliot in his poem “The Wastelands,”  said; “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”  The greatest fear in any man is the fear of a meaningless life.  Suicide, self-mutilation, emulation upon the fires of senseless lusts become the antidote for the sorrows without purpose.  For the man trapped in hopelessness, pornography, sexual addictions, chemical dependency, gluttony, physical abuse, emotional abuse, are all just symptoms of a broken heart that has never found joy at the bottom of sorrow. 

If as Wes Yoder wrote in Chapter Eight, sorrow is the hand that shapes us, then every one of us need to encourage one another to keep our eyes fixed on the finish.  However, if the finish we are running toward is only to satisfy the lusts of our flesh, or no greater than our own selfish desires, then we have missed the point of the sorrows.  If we grieve only for ourselves, we become disfigured, cruel, empty, and darkened against all hope of redemption.  Without hope, we become less than we could have been.  In the course of my life, I’ve known men who owned no cloak of invisibility, whose every breath seemed to draw in unspeakable horrors.  My heart would break for them, until I sensed that they enjoyed the sympathy the pain brought them. I’ve also known men who moved through insurmountable obstacles with effortless grace, unwilling to allow the sorrow to throw a handful of dust upon their graves.  In the end, as you face your last breath, it isn’t about your belief in God.  It isn’t whether you succumbed to your worst fears, or stood defiantly upon the blooded hills of your greatest achievements, and laughed at those less courageous than you.  In the end, after every dart has left it’s wound, and every cut has become a healed scar, any man who has a shred of virtue left in him, will wonder if he left anything of value behind.  Those who’ve placed their trust in Christ can be assured they have. 

I can’t help but think of the Apostle Paul, writing to his dear friend Timothy.  Like Paul, have I run the race to win?  Have I fought the good fight?  Every picture the Apostle Paul drew upon, and that we adore as Christian men, is fraught with struggle, sorrow, and bitter disappointment.  The runner fights against the body’s desire to quit, to submit to the effects of fatigue.  We all admire the runner who reaches down from somewhere beyond muscle and sinew into a wellspring that is mystical, and God given.  In the same moment we are rejoicing with the one who found that inner strength, we groan with those who can’t find that place beyond hope, and do not cross the line in victory.  Sorrow trips them up, and they listen to the song of their flesh.  They never reach into the strength beyond knowing .  Let’s admit it dear brothers, we are all in the same race, and the goal is beyond the knowledge of our death warrant that was signed upon the day of our conception.

 

Wes Yoder bemoans the fact that as American Christian men, we don’t prepare one another, or even comfort one another in those times when sorrow is pressing in upon us.  He sees men suffering in quiet agony as God’s mighty hand works to make us greater than ourselves.  As a man who works with tools all day, I know that the tools that shape us seem cruel to the untrained eye, just as the craftsman’s tools must seem cruel to the stone waiting to be shaped.  My reply to Brother Yoder is:  how do you prepare any man for the betrayal of friends, brothers, mothers, fathers, wives, and even children?  How do you prepare a wide-eyed youngster for the cut of despair made at the hands of those he thought he could trust?  What do you say to your child as he prepares for God’s operating table called life?  How do you tell a young man beginning his adult years, that the young woman who trembles at his touch, will one day seem cold and heartless in her rejection of his passion?  What can you say to a man cradling his infant child, that will hold him together when that child becomes a teenager, and angrily storms out of the house in rebellion against the father’s deepest beliefs?  None of us can be prepared for the personal pain that we experience when life throws us the equivalent of a train wreck.   Even if I sat down and made a history of those things that have ripped my soul apart, the truth is that no one will ever experience what I’ve experienced.  You might be able empathize, but you won’t be able to feel it.  Sorry, Bro. Wes, this is where you and I part ways.  You can have all the dinner and conversations you want, but when a man is in the midst of his greatest sorrow, it is between him and God.  The Book of Job should make this clear.  Job’s friends could only make his sorrow deeper.  In the end, it was God Himself, who stepped in and put an end to the fiasco.  There is no sense to betrayal.  There is no reason for abuse.  There are no answers for the innocent who are thrown beneath the bus.  We can only cling to the knowledge, that at the end of our sorrow, there is a God who makes all things work together for good to them who love the Lord, and are called according to His purpose. 

During the class, I hoped to comfort you with the knowledge that you are facing nothing less than what our own precious creator has endured.  Betrayal, rejection, rebellion, heartbreak, pain, grief, and even anger at the cruelty of life’s bitter drink have been inflicted upon the creator of the universe.  We suffer because we are created in the image of a suffering God.

What?  God suffer sorrow? 

More than you’ll ever know in your allotted days.  It is because He has endured them, He understands us.  It is because He knows the depths of our sorrows, that He knows their power to transform us into greater beings than we would be if our lives were empty of any struggle or conflict.  The creator of all life has known every bitter pill we swallow, and in the end, it has made Him a being of love.  Love trumps every aspect of His nature, and allows Him to redeem that which He loves, even though Justice demanded our destruction.  Love became the salve that carried Him through the rejection of a third of the angels.  Love drove Him to call out to fallen man even though He knew before He called out what had happened.  You see, I bring it back to the one truth that I know to be self-evident; all sorrow is born of relationship.  My deepest sorrow is that I betray the Lord almost every day.  Even though my heart is ever set upon Him, He is the one I fail the most.  Still, He desires me, and calls to me in the cool of the day.  “David, where are you?”  In my fear and shame, I can only hold the fig leaf of my betrayal against my nakedness and declare my love for Him. 

That is why Chapter Nine is such a powerful moment of truth.  In it, we have the answer to our own betrayals of the Lord we say we love.  In the end it isn’t about our knowledge, but our relationship.  That is why in the end, HE WILL wipe away every tear.  Who other than our loving redeemer can erase the bitter tears born of sorrow?  We must trust our end to the one who endured more sorrow than we could ever imagine.

I’d like to apologize to my Bro. Charles for the length of this post.  I couldn’t find a point to be brief, and the prose wouldn’t stop.  

HOMEWORK:  Read Chapter Nine- and highlight a passage that speaks directly to  you.  

Why Sorrow?

Last Sunday's assignment was to be ready to share one moment of sorrow that forever shaped you life. 

It is easy for men to share the grand victories, the great accomplishments, and the stupendous feats of courage.  The history of mankind is full of tall tales and legends born of men recounting a lesser or more mundane feat till it becomes something far removed from the thing it was.  I once read an account of Daniel Boone, in which he said he often lamented the tall-tales told about him.  He said that his life was far more difficult, and far less heroic than the stories made it out to be.  Our heroic moments display our feelings at the instant they were needed, however, it is upon the anvil of sorrow, that men are forged into greater beings than themselves.  It is when we yield to the Master’s well-aimed blows, that the steel that makes us who we are, is folded in upon itself, and forced to become a part of the strength that defines us.  The finest Damascus steel doesn’t shine or reflect the light with a brilliance born of quick forging and hours of polishing.  The dull gray steel belies the hundreds of folds, and hours spent in the furnaces.  When swords crash blade to blade, Damascus steel sings with the song true temper.  Our sorrows do not sharpen us, but they do shape us.  If we allow God to mold us, and help us become obedient to His will, we will enjoy the privilege of being the finest steel He can forge.  Otherwise, we become just so much re-bar. 

For some of us, the moment He sets the hammer to us, we whine and complain against the strikes.  Wasn’t it enough to be fired in the furnace? Must the creator drive us into the anvil of nothingness?  Some of us, were too young to understand the Master’s work, we accept the blows until we’re told we don’t have to accept them.  We become hard, and brittle, shattering at the slightest impact. 

When we discuss and share our sorrows, we find ourselves joining in with a long lineage of Patriarchs who not only felt compelled to reveal their great moments of faith, but also their moments of utter despair and failure. It is how we act in failure, and in victory that defines us.  Both are just as true. 

As our men began to talk this morning, I felt the Holy Spirit warning me not to open the books of sorrow that are written in each one of us.  Instead, we had a wonderful dialogue upon ‘Why’ we have to go through sorrows. 

I’m one of those people who hate ‘Sunday School’ answers.  I despise the religious, pious, answers we make up without any scriptural reason behind them.  We experience sorrow, suffering, and pain, because we are like our God.  Our God suffered before the foundation of the world was laid.  He was betrayed before any of us ever knew the sting of betrayal.  He was crucified before the first human walked upon the face of the earth.  We suffer, so that we may be like him. 

The problem with mankind, is that we view our life upon this vale as being uniquely human, and that God has never felt our pain.  We view Him as an emotionless, abject, being incapable of feeling our deepest sorrows.  “He’s God, all He has to do is say the word, and it could change in an instant.” 

He did change it in an instant.  He spoke us into existence.  In that instant, the lamb was slain, the Son was given, the die was cast.  Why we experience sorrow, is because He wants relationship with us, based on choice, not on programming.  If sorrow is the meat of my humanity, then I know him whom I’ve loved in the fullness of His suffering.  To love me, is to suffer great sorrow.  He was so willing to do so.

The Shape of Our Sorrow

Over the course of our study into Wes Yoder’s book, Bond of Brothers, I haven’t really stopped to sing the praises of Mr. Yoder and his book. The depth of spiritual insight and truth woven into the fabric of the book is remarkable.  This makes my second time through the book, and I’m still finding golden threads of truth woven into his simple, but provocative words.  As much as I loved chapter seven, it is chapter eight that brings us to the very heart of God, and intriguingly enough, our own heart.  The title, in and of itself should have been our first clue that the truth that awaited us was deeper than just saying we all have hurts.  “SORROW – THE HAND THAT SHAPES US”  is a mirror that reflects the soul of a loving God. 

In preparation for the study, I asked the men to read the chapter without giving them any clue as to where we were going with the information.  When the men arrived this morning, I had only one question; “What is sorrow?” 

The problem is, we don’t know. 

One of the most powerful forces in our lives, is also one of least understood.  Is sorrow grief, disappointment, pain, or agony?  Is there a difference between physical pain, and suffering and sorrow?  If Christ was described by the prophets and the apostles as a man of sorrows, what was the source of his sorrow?  Why was the messiah described as a man of sorrow, afflicted, and despised?   Why would God inhabit our sorrow?  Wasn’t it enough that he became sin for us?  Why did he have to suffer our sorrows, and endure our greatest frailties?  Why would the Creator of all things take upon himself the form of a slave, hunted, abused, betrayed, and eventually murdered for the very ones he came to redeem? 

As we knocked around the outside of these questions, we came to one conclusion.  While we may suffer pain, affliction, or even unending hardship, sorrow can only be born of relationship.  We may suffer injury by our own hand, but when it is inflicted by others, it brings us great sorrow.  Only people we care about or we make ourselves vulnerable to, can cause us to feel sorrow.  It is deeper than physical pain, and goes to our being given everything we need to participate in the divine nature.  (More on that next week.)  A matter of fact, we quickly discovered that the inevitable end of being intimate, and vulnerable is to suffer sorrow.  If relationships are the source of our sorrows, what happens in those relationships to bring us sorrow? 

Betrayal is the first and foremost cause of sorrow.  Everything else is only a variation of betrayal.  The reason for that, is because our trust has been violated.  Which brings us to the man of sorrows actually being the God of Sorrows.  The creator of heaven and earth understands betrayal more than any of us.  The being who breathed his life into our lungs, was betrayed by the very beings he desired to empower and love.  Did he have to come to earth and suffer as a man to understand sorrow? 

NO, he fully understood it.  From the beginning of time, He has lived with the very same agony we all go through.  He is the model for us to emulate, and strive after.  His love is the purest we can hope to  live.  It isn’t born in laws, codes, or forms, it thrives in allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.  Sorrow is the sister of joy, and is born of being completely given over to others.  We will never know the fullness of his joy until we are fully acquainted with his sorrow.  Those who preach any other gospel, are hucksters and charlatans at best. 

In preparation for next week, I asked the men to re-read chapter eight and to be ready to discuss one of their greatest sorrows that shaped their lives. 

Should be interesting to say the least.

All That is Beautiful and Good

It’s been a frustrating couple of weeks, especially in terms of meeting the commitments to this blog,  and  “The Sparrow’s Perch.”  I think I have a damaged Cat-5 cable to our router at the church, and have been unable to pursue a solution to it largely due to lack of finances.  I’ve had the time, but very little work over the last week.  I’M NOT WHINING.  These things happen over the course of our lives, and in each time of distress or struggle, we can choose to be blown away, or we can move ahead in Christ Jesus.  He is my source, even in famine or pestilence.  Actually, it is when all is well that my faith is tested.  When the work of my hands is prosperous, and I take my ease, the pleasures I’ve bought begin to crowd out my time with the Lord.   No, I don’t want to stay on the edge of poverty, but I do want the Lord to bring me into a place where his gifts and favor are given back in equal measure to a blessed life.  I want to live in that place where my walk is consistent no matter how wealthy or how poor I am.  So, to make a long story short, this blog is written from my Tablet.  The tablet is not cooperating due to a conflict with the keyboard and the blog editor.  Every time I capitalize, I have to hit the shift button again and wait till it goes back to input mode.  Needless to say, this blog will be short. 

We finished studying chapter seven of Bond of Brothers and discussed our God given appreciation of beauty.  Last week I asked the men to find one thing of beauty to talk about, other than their wives.  Talk about an interesting session.  For those of you who are ‘spiritual purists’  the discussion was surprisingly devoid of ‘Sunday School’ answers.  I fully expected them.  I expected someone to say; “I think the Lord is beautiful.”    DUH!  So do I.  Let’s work harder than that, and we did.  It quickly became apparent that a good portion of us, like sunrises and sunsets.  A good cup of coffee, a beautiful sunrise, and a man is sent into appreciation heaven.  Our lives move at such a hectic pace and are overloaded with so many modern conveniences, a simple sunrise can bring us to tears.  Maybe our wives would be surprised to know how many of their men find this simple pleasure rewarding. 

Things that are beautiful: 

A well formed horse, feeling free and alive. 

Sunsets and sunrises,

A sonogram of a father’s first child

A classic car  

The Sound of a V8 motor with glass packs

Young people in abandoned worship,

Wild animals being themselves

The beauty of the Universe as beheld through  the Hubble Telescope

Despite what the media, and Hollywood would have you believe, men are capable of appreciating the beauty of the world around them.  Our appreciation for beauty is for more than  a gorgeous woman.  We were made to appreciate and worship the creator of all life and the creation he made.   The heart of a man can be stirred to depths of wonder at the innocence of a newborn child, the purity of those for whom life has purified their hearts with endless innocence.  We are able to see the beauty within the voices of children singing in choirs, the life in a painting, movie, or the words written in a book.  We are enthralled at the discipline and strength within the body of well trained athlete. 

Men are in awe of honor, and deeply appreciative of the beauty all around them.  We have to raise up a new generation of men who break away from the perverted idea of beauty and embrace true beauty.