Lead, Kindly Light

When my own words are not enough, sometimes God sends other people to fill the space. I received this email (excerpted below) of immense encouragement from a dear, dear sister (I love you! – you know who you are). I share it here in hopes that it will also stir inspiration and hope in readers of this site. God IS faithful, in every season.

I don’t know exactly your brand of pain but I know what it is to suffer under God’s hand for a very long time, to feel that he is turning the back of his hand toward you, and hiding his face. Over and over again.

Just thinking about your pain makes me recall my own again, those dark years, and my tears are flowing for you as much as for my own memories of despair. And though I’m in a relatively calm place now, the storm is never too far away…you know you really have no control over the things you care about the most…over anything really. And that can be pretty terrifying.

I just remember during my times of personal hell, one thought that kept me moored and anchored when black waters swirled all around me. I feel compelled to share it with you, hoping it will encourage you, hoping it will help you cling to God and not withdraw from Him…from the only one that can carry you through this. The one who loves you so much…who is hurting for you now too, more than I hurt for you or even you yourself. If he could take this pain away from you he would do it in a heart beat, without hesitation…why would he not spare you from this when he’s already give up everything for you?

So the thought is this. It is the picture of a concerned parent, bringing his sick toddler to the doctor. Of the doctor administering some horribly painful procedure to the child. Of the child thrashing around wildly, screaming in pain and agony. And of the father holding the child down with all his might, with his full weight, tears streaming down his face, his heart breaking anew with every cry of his child—Stop! Don’t you love me? Why are you doing this to me? Make it stop! Let me go! Don’t you love me?—and the whole time the father wishes there was some way to trade places with his child…he would gladly trade places with him if he could.

We know this painful procedure is a spiritual surgery of sorts. We know it’s to pry open our dead, stiff fingers that clutch in them some prized idol of our hearts. Sometimes it’s the life of our only child (like Abraham and Isaac), and sometimes it’s the blessing of a father (like Jacob’s struggles)…but always it’s the one thing we think we cannot bear to live without.

All of this I’ve known and acknowledged for a very long time. But it’s only recently that God has taught me (and is still teaching me) something even more amazing and grace-filled (or rather I should say “amazing-grace” filled).

That God takes it away AND he gives it back.

Once he’s pried away that idol from your cold dead hand, and makes you cry out in pain and agony, and makes you acknowledge that He is Lord—the only one that we need and truly desire, then he gives it back to you.

The only child you had to sacrifice, the blessing you wanted, the children and wealth that were taken away from you all on one day by one horrific storm that literally came from hell. God gives you back your heart’s desire. He promises to fulfill your every deep need. He promises life in abundance. And that’s not just “spiritual” blessings. It’s everything.

Now before this starts sounding too much like a “health and wealth” gospel, I guess I should clarify that what God gives you back is not necessarily the physical/material life you might have picked out for yourself in a cosmic catalogue. It may not look the same as you may have envisioned in your mind (it will be better!) But the point is it FEELS the same. Whatever deep-seated desire you had, for love, integrity, healing from brokenness, meaning, significance—all the things we know we all need—he gives it back to us. He gives it back 10-fold. He gives us what we could not even have imagined for ourselves, what we would not have dared to be so bold to ask him. He gives so much that the precious idol that we clutched so tightly looks like a shabby piece of rubbish compared to what he replaces it with.

And I don’t believe it is just spiritual pie (by and by) that he gives us. Our God is a God of the physical and material, of flesh and blood and touchable goodness. He is the God of the tangible too. He is more than just the tangible, but He is certainly no less. Far be it from me to prophecy that God will reward each man in this life…the ultimate reward is always yet to come…but God is good in this life. Before we get to heaven we will taste and see and know that God is good. Because He’s done it all throughout history. Hannah was granted Samuel in flesh and blood. Abraham was spared Isaac. And Jacob returned home with a spiritual AND physical inheritance.

The difference is in their attitudes. Why would God take something away just to give it back to us again? Because, I believe that it would’ve killed us to have it in the first instance, but we can have it in the second only because God has cut out the cancer in our hearts that would’ve spread all out of control if he did not make us fall to our knees and confess that He is God alone, first and foremost.

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[I] want to encourage you while you are in this wintry deadness. It won’t be forever. I love that I had the chance to get out of perpetually sunny California to experience true winters. Everything is dead and cold and barren and it can drag on soooo long. And my own winter (in my life) seemed to drag on forever too…for decades. But only recently, for the first time ever, I feel Spring stirring. I feel the warmth of God’s love and the amazing beauty of his creation…his gifts to me are as bountiful and free as the thousands of flowers blooming in the budding trees. And yet I still fear a second winter, a new fresh hell…But at least next time I will have the memory of Spring to give me hope.

Maybe it’s premature to talk about Spring when you are suffering the sting of Winter (with no discernable end in sight!) But I just wanted to testify that God is good.

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I just felt compelled to say how amazing God has been in my own times of desolation and I hope it encourages you in some way. And what my groanings can’t express, I will leave to the Spirit to perfect even as I pray for you to feel God’s love holding you closely and tightly to him.

So beautiful, and so true. Thanks, dear sister. And thanks be to God, for this encouragement through her.