God Suffers With--April 30, 2021

God Suffers With--April 30, 2021

"Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death." [Hebrews 2:14-15]

Last week one night, a little past midnight, God taught me something about the way Jesus loves and saves us.  I was a little groggy eyed at the time to understand, but with a few days' hindsight, I see it with a beautiful clarity.

My son was awake in the night with a flare-up of spring allergies.  What started with a runny nose became congestion, which became drainage that then prompted a cough, which made his nine-year-old throat feel sore and head feel heated (though he never got a fever), which in turn made him feel miserable and uncomfortable.  And from there, he got worried--of course, in this era, his fear was COVID, and the fear and generable unpleasantness made him have a hard time falling asleep, which meant that his mind wouldn't let his body relax enough to calm down while we waited for his medicine to kick in.  It became a vicious cycle: the symptoms kept him up, but not being able to sleep magnified the intensity of his symptoms (which really would get better as soon as he could rest and not aggravate them with more sniffling and coughing). And the longer he couldn't fall asleep, the more he was nursing the fear that this wasn't just a flare-up of allergies.  That fed the anxiety, which made it harder to get peace of mind enough to let him sleep... and to let his body rest while the allergy pill cleared his breathing.

You know how those kinds of nights go--whether you've been the one sick, or a loved one was up in the night, you know how the rotten feeling makes you unable to sleep, and the added tiredness makes the rotten feeling somehow worse, which feeds the whole cycle.  You know how fear makes the whole situation worse, too--the anxiety makes it harder to let your brain quiet down, which makes your body unable to settle down, either.

So, my son asked me if I would lay down next to him (this was part of how I really knew he was feeling miserable--when he's feeling well, he's usually Mister Cool and doesn't need help or hugs or stuffed animals).  And so I did.  And I did so knowing full well that the things that were keeping him up would now keep me up--the sniffling that would feed his congestion and the rest would now keep me awake.  The tossing and turning as he tried to get comfortable would also keep me from falling asleep.  And the restlessness that was making him wearier would also keep me from getting rest.  And yet--knowing that I have been the one keeping up someone else who loved me plenty of times before--I knew that my presence was part of what my son needed.  By being present with him--in that time of feeling rotten--it allowed him to feel like he wasn't alone, but was being watched over by someone who was going through it with him.  It let his mind ease into peace... which then let his body sink into relief, too.

In other words, the way to relieve my son of his suffering was to enter into it with him, to be present through it alongside of him, and from there to dissolve the power of his fear and anxiety.  

Something like that is the way these verses from Hebrews talk about what Jesus has done for us: he has shared our humanness, all the way down, so to speak.  He has come to lie down next to us in our sickness, like a parent comforting a sick child by sharing their restlessness, until their presence can bring relief.  Jesus has taken our hurts into himself, shared the dis-ease that troubles us, and absorbed it into himself.  And when fear becomes a vicious circle, ramping up our agitation like a sore throat that gets worse the more you are awake and keep needing to cough, Jesus breaks the power of fear by taking away the finality of the thing we feared the most: death.  And once we no longer have to be constantly afraid of death, we are freed to be at peace in this life.  The agitation and nervous anxiety dissipate, and we can be still, as the scriptures say it, and know the presence of God there.

Jesus' way of saving is to enter into our hurt, our suffering, and our vicious cycle of fear and restlessness that only makes us more on edge with one another.  He has come to be with us through it, and in that presence with us--all the way to experiencing death--he has broken the power death has over us, both over our bodies and our minds.

When you think about how you are loved, then, friends, know this: God in Christ chooses to be with you through our worst moments--the ones thrown at us by life and the ones we make worse ourselves--and has chosen to bear our restlessness, to share our humanity, and to die our death with us, in order to break the power of that death.  You are worth it to God to keep vigil beside, even when our anxious tossing and turning keeps God from peace.  You are worth sharing suffering for. And in the presence of that God who enters our human space to share our human frailty, we find relief.  This is how you are loved.

Lord Jesus, let your love enfold and heal us, now and always.