My Journey in praying for Edward
Katlyn on PAIN
“We can ignore even pleasure. But Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our Pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
-C.S. Lewis
A few weeks ago, I was faced with a brief encounter that kindly escorted me to a long week of pain and grieving. I’m not sure whether everyone feels Pain the same way, but if you are anything like me, Pain feels as though God—successfully—tried to remove a piece of tar or taffy stuck on your heart but also ripped a part of the flesh with it, leaving a gaping wound that demands a trip to the ER.
To be more specific about the Pain, I had to let go of someone I deeply valued and loved last year. Throughout the course of year dealing with the loss, I hoped that I had fully healed and moved on in my life. But the Lord exposed my unhealed heart by reopening the wound that I had sloppily sealed shut.
Pain is truly crippling, but illuminating. As I rolled back and forth for several days, clutching my swelling heart, I was actually impressed at Pain’s ability to significantly interrupt the flow and decelerate the pace of my life. I didn’t have the same energy and resolve to figure out ten different things at once, or even give attention to petty things that would normally cause anxiety in my life. I couldn’t dash around in busyness, but was merely content to get through the day. Pain exposed my weaknesses and that I actually didn’t have my life together.
But Pain’s greatest quality is its power to correctly reposition one’s heart with the Father. Imagine a precious toddler running through a store, distracted by all the toys on display, but he suddenly trips on flat ground, falls, and starts to cry. And although all sorts of people can rush to his side, this baby will refuse to be comforted until he finds himself in his mother’s embrace. Now while he was running and joyfully eyeing the toys, the child probably didn’t realize how far he had strayed from the most important person of his life. If he was soberly aware of his own desires and needs, he most likely would not have even left the stroller. Yet the natural heart inclination is to wander, forgetting how much one needs the author and giver of Life, and instead striving to attain the frivolities that might decorate and pamper up our lives.
Thankfully, Pain has brought me back to a place of humility, crying out to Jesus, “I need you more,” even more so as my own immaturity faces these afflictions, not my holiness. And there is a sense of joy and hope in my heart, because I know that even if it takes Pain, my Father has not given up on His wandering child, and is pressing me closer to His presence.
Maclaren on Isaiah 50:10
It seems easy to trust when all is bright, but really it is just as hard, only we can more easily deceive ourselves, when physical well-being makes us comfortable. We are less conscious of our own emptiness, we mask our poverty from ourselves, we do not seem to need God so much. But sorrow reveals our need to us.
It is to trust, not to anything more. No attempts to stifle tears are required. There is no sin in sorrow. The emotions which we feel to God in bright days are not appropriate at such times. There are seasons in every life when all that we can say is, ‘Truly this is a grief, and I will bear it.’
Submissive silence is sometimes the most eloquent confession of faith. ‘I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it.’
If our religious life was in more vigorous exercise, more pure, perfect and continuous, there would be no separation of faith and the joy of faith. But we have not such unruffled, perfect, uninterrupted faith, and hence there may be, and often is, faith without much joy of faith. I would not say that such experience is always the fruit of sin. But certainly we are not to blame Him or to think of Him as breaking His promises, or departing from His nature. No principles, be they ever so firmly held, ever so undoubtingly received, ever so passionately embraced, exert their whole power equally at all moments in a life. There come times of languor when they seem to be mere words, dead commonplaces, as unlike their former selves as sapless winter boughs to their summer pride of leafy beauty. The same variation in our realising grasp affects the truths of the Gospel. Sometimes they seem but words, with all the life and power sucked out of them, pale shadows of themselves, or like the dried bed of a wady with blazing, white stones, where flashing water used to leap, and all the flowerets withered, which once bent their meek little heads to drink. No facts are always equally capable of exciting their correspondent emotions. Those which most closely affect our personal life, in which we find our deepest joys, are not always present in our minds, and when they are, do not always touch the springs of our feelings. No possessions are always equally precious to us. The rich man is not always conscious with equal satisfaction of his wealth. If, then, the way from the mind to the emotions is not always equally open, there is a reason why there may be faith without light of joy. If the thoughts are not always equally concentrated on the things which produce joy, there is a reason why there may be the habit of fearing God, though there be not the present vigorous exercise of faith, and consequently but little light.
It is clear then that, if these be the causes of this state, the one cure for it is to exercise our faith more energetically.
Trust, do not look back. We are tempted to cast away our confidence and to say: What profit shall I have if I pray unto Him? But it is on looking onwards, not backwards, that safety lies.
Trust, do not think about your sins.
Trust, do not think so much about your joy.
It is in the occupation of heart and mind with Jesus that joy and peace come. To make them our direct aim is the way not to attain them. Though now there seems a long wintry interval between seed time and harvest, yet ‘in due season we shall reap if we faint not.’
🔥The most advanced Christian life needs a perpetual renewal and repetition of past acts of faith.
Do not try to make fires for yourselves, ineffectual and transient, but look to Him, and you shall not walk in darkness, even amid the gloom of earth, but shall have light in your darkness, till the time come when, in a clearer heaven and a lighter air, ‘Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.’
Barnes on 2 Thessalonians 3:3
Though human beings cannot be trusted, God is faithful to his promises and his purposes. He may always be confided in; and when people are unbelieving, perverse, unkind, and disposed to do us wrong, we may go to him, and we shall always find in him one in whom we may confide. This is an exceedingly interesting declaration, and is a beautiful illustration of the resource which a truly pious mind will feel that it has. We often have occasion to know, to our sorrow, that “all men have not faith.” We witness their infidelity. We see how they turn away from the truth. We see many who once gave some evidence that they had “faith,” abandon it all; and we see many in the church who seem to have no true faith, and who refuse to lend their aid in promoting the cause of religion. In such circumstances, the heart is disposed to despond, and to ask whether religion can be advanced in the midst of so much indifference and opposition? At such times, how consoling is it to be able to turn, as Paul did, to one who is faithful; who never fails us; and who will certainly accomplish his benevolent purposes. Men may be faithless and false, but God never is. They may refuse to embrace the gospel, and set themselves against it, but God will not abandon His great purposes. Many who are in the church may forget their solemn and sacred vows, and may show no fidelity to the cause of their Saviour, but God himself will never abandon that cause. To a pious mind it affords unspeakably more consolation to reflect that a faithful God is the friend of the cause which we love, than it would were all men, in and out of the church, its friends.
God is faithful over Edward and BTM. 2/24/2022.
Dear Edward, I still pray for you every time I get the chance. I would say I do so every day but I miss days of prayer. I’m human. So human, actually, because whenever I remember you in my prayers, tears surface. I miss our friendship and the fun memories we shared our first year. But these tears have gone far beyond sorrow of old friendship. I long for your salvation. The thought of knowing someone I still love so dearly spending eternity in torment and separation from a merciful God pangs my heart. I simply don’t know what to do with that thought. What would you do? For me, I could only come to pray. I’ll get distracted, lose vitality, or even put something before my prayer life, but there is an unceasing anguish in my soul for your salvation. The pain is so much whenever I think of you. I can feel my heart beat. It pervades all my thoughts and emotions. I’ve dreamt of seeing you again. I don’t know how I’ll actually respond when that time comes. When I see you again, will it be when you’re an enemy of the cross or will it be when you’ve returned to the Father as the prodigal son? I really don’t know, but I hope it’s the latter. No, it must be. God will do it one day. Until then, I’ll be on the porch overlooking the horizon with Father God waiting upon your return. Come home, Edward. Come home.
With many tears, JJ 10/2/2022