Category Archives: Suffering

Cry it out.

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I’ve always been impressed when actors cry on cue. Recently I read the biography of Melissa Gilbert who played the part of Laura Ingalls on the TV series “Little House on the Prairie.” When an episode called for tears, she’d separate herself, close her eyes, and withdraw into a sad memory, focusing on it until she’d brought it from her past into her present. After several minutes, real tears would come.

I wonder if there’s a difference between coaxed tears and those that come when we’re trying to hold them back. If examined under a microscope, would scientists be able to tell the difference?

My friend Barb Ingraham wrote, “When scientists studied human tears, they discovered the purpose of the tears determined their chemical composition. Tears to cleanse foreign objects were different from tears of sorrow, which were different from tears of joy.”

When I read that, I thought immediately of our God who delights in tending to details, assigning a purpose to each one. He cares about our crying, keeps track of our tears, and ministers to the reason for our weeping. And it gets even better than that. God uses the product of our grief, the tears themselves, to help us. Barb wrote, “Tears of sorrow actually have natural anti-depressants that cause a literal lift in body and spirit.” We have an awesome, helpful God!

When I was a newlywed, I awoke one night feeling sad about something (can’t recall what) and started to cry. Climbing out of bed and heading into the next room, I sat on the couch and bawled my eyes out, wishing Nate would wake up and come looking for me. I desperately needed his arms around me but wasn’t going to wake him.

I sat on the couch sobbing for 15 minutes or so when suddenly there he stood in the doorway, his eyebrows up and his mouth hanging open. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“I’m sad.”

“What should I do?”

I looked up at him with my wet face and runny nose, aching to have him enfold me in his arms but wanting him to initiate it. (Such was the mindset of a newlywed.) Because he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he sat down next to me and put his arms around me, exactly what I’d longed for.

I melted into him with a tremendous sense of relief and gratitude. Before long my crying calmed to a sniffle, and we both went back to bed. The crisis had passed, because of his love.

Each of us cries because of a crisis, and it’s God’s love that can bring us through. We see it in his design of our specific tears, realizing he knows why we’re hurting and, more importantly, knows what we need. Whether it’s reassurance of his love or something more, he’ll make sure we get it. He may not take away our crisis, but he’ll be our shoulder to cry on as we move through it.

And he makes this additional promise:

“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” (Psalm 126:5)

Overloaded

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Today while running errands I was waiting at a light when a spectacular semi-truck turned in front of me. It had more tires than I’d ever seen on one vehicle, all doubles, 4 to an axle except on the cab. As it drove past, I counted: 36 wheels.

All I could think of was how difficult it must be to keep that many tires in good shape simultaneously. Are they wearing properly and balanced correctly? Are their lug nuts snug? Rotating tires must be a nightmare similar to playing Mancala with game pieces too heavy to lift.

Why so many wheels?  The answer is, tons of weight inside.

It made me think of all the excess weight we carry, not in pounds but in burdens. Trouble comes when we try to carry too much on only 2 wheels.

This morning in Bible study we were in Exodus, reading how Moses was trying to lead a million obstreperous people through miserable circumstances. He was doing the best he could, but it wasn’t good enough. He didn’t have enough wheels to hold up his heavy load, and it was ruining him.

God saw the problem and brought Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, to the massive Israelite camp at exactly the right time. In learning how burdened Moses was he said, “The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone.” (Exodus 18:18)

So God planted a fresh idea in Jethro’s mind, and Jethro passed it along to Moses. The heavy weight was quickly redistributed to helper-judges, which gave Moses the 36 wheels he needed to continue moving the massive group forward.

Years later he again found himself weighed down by the impossible burden of his role. The people were crushing him with their complaints, so once again he went to God. “I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me.” (Numbers 11:14) It was time for a new set of tires. God provided them again in the form of many able helpers, and Moses’ load was lifted.

What about our 21st century loads? More often than not we take on impossible weight, dragging under the heavy burden while trying to give the impression we’re living feather-light. When others see us bent beneath our loads and ask if they can help, we say, ”No thanks,” not wanting to add to their loads. But as we learned in Bible study this morning, if we accept the help of others, a blessing comes to them as well as to us.

Moses modeled what to do when we’re overloaded. Step 1: ask God to lighten it up. Step 2: listen for how. We’re to avoid the extremes of either asking no one, or asking many of the wrong ones, because our best burden-lifter will always be God.

“Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.” (Psalm 68:19)

The Buffett Zone

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Warren Buffett, the world’s richest person, has recently been in the news promoting a new approach to our country’s taxes, but there are a number of other things about him more interesting than that. His name, for example: Buffett.

I once heard an interview in which his grandchild said, “He doesn’t give us money unless it’s college tuition. He’s happy to pay for those expenses, but other than that doesn’t give us anything.”

And that’s where his interesting name comes in. The word “buffet” is a potent King James Bible word many of us cut our spiritual teeth on when we were kids. It means to strike against or push repeatedly. Mr. Buffett apparently recognizes that a little life-buffeting is a valuable thing.

Although I know nothing about the man’s spiritual point of view, his reasoning on the buffeting idea falls in line with Scripture. The biblical Paul mentions he’d been buffeted, listing it along with being hungry, thirsty, homeless and naked. His purpose was to warn new believers about what was ahead, urging them to persevere. He told them God would use the weak as strong voices for his saving message.

In another place Paul wrote about Satan buffeting him personally by way of physical pain. He again reminds readers God often displays great power through weak humans if they can rise above pain by taking advantage of God’s sufficient grace to endure.

All of us have been in the Buffet Zone now and again, bumping up against obstacles much like passengers in carnival bumper cars slam into one another. Warren Buffett has refused to use money to shield his grandchildren from the bumps and bruises of life, since those are the basis for a practical education in the “school of hard buffeting-knocks.”

The King James translation includes one more dramatic, instructional use of the word “buffet.” It’s used to describe the blows delivered to Jesus after his arrest: “They spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands.” (Matthew 26:67) And how did Jesus react?

He took it.

It was unfair… blasphemous… hurtful… evil. But he took it.

By responding to extreme, undeserved buffeting in this way, Jesus became our example. We’re to garner inner strength from the Father as he did, counting on him to meet out justice on our behalf. This goes against our natural instincts to lash back and get even. It also contradicts what we’re taught by the world. But becoming fully dependent on God for rescue leaves it up to him to control the buffeting and also the retribution.

This approach sounds risky, but counting on the sufficient grace of God always turns out to be a good risk.

“What glory is it, if, when you are buffeted for your faults, you shall take it patiently? But if, when you do well and suffer for it you take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” (1 Peter 2:20)