“When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary; When troubles come, and my heart burdened be; Then, I am still and wait here in the silence, Until you come and sit awhile with me.” – Brendan Graham
“’My dad died before he could walk me down the aisle.’” This was the first thought that came to my heart when I heard the words, ‘Daddy died,’ from my mother’s lips. There would be no father-daughter dance at my reception, no proclamation of, ‘Her mother and I do,’ when the minister asks, ‘Who gives this woman away?’
“He was gone, and my heart went numb in a single breath.”
The days that followed were filled with picking out a plot, digging through photos for a slideshow, and selecting songs and readings for his funeral. The days sped by like a pointless music montage in a movie and then paused to a frame-by-frame, slow motion the day of his funeral. Yet, in my entire life, I have never felt closer to the Lord than that day.”
The woman who wrote these words, is conveying an experience that many have had in life. Death is no respecter of persons; it doesn’t show favoritism. It doesn’t care who you are…whether you’re rich or poor; whether you’re famous or a nobody! It doesn’t care what your dreams are; what your aspirations or hopes are; what your I.Q. or trophies are. It doesn’t care to whom you’re related; the color of your skin; or whether you deserve to live or not.
And death? Death never comes when you think it should! It almost always arrives unexpectedly. When you pray for it to come…it doesn’t, and when you least expect it…it pops in to devastate your world. It never seemingly comes for whom we think it should…it comes for the young, as well as the old; the righteous as well as, the wicked. Death is no friend of mankind; in fact the Bible describes death as one of our greatest enemies, but God is just the opposite: God is the great lover of mankind.
And there are so many ways in which he demonstrates that, not the least of which is sending to us a Savior who came to “taste death for every man.” But beyond this, Jesus came not only to suffer for us but to suffer with us through the pains and the multitudes of tragedies and disappointments that befall us throughout the many vicissitudes of life.
In a most personal and intimate way, I’ve discovered this about Jesus, that like the song, “when I am down and O, my soul weary. When troubles come, and my heart burdened be”, he always comes to sit with me in the dust of my brokenness; he always listens and speaks to me in hushed, loving tones. He pours over me his unending and varied kindnesses through his many acts of providential concern that puddle on the floor of my soul in the cavernous recesses of my inner man. And like any good, loving father would, he responds in numerous, indescribable ways to the whimpered cries of his wounded, confused little boy; gently stroking his fevered head with assurances of his continued love and goodness.
I have often met him there, in the desert wastelands of a broken-heart, sitting cross-legged in the dirt of hurt and hopelessness. And when I find myself there; all alone with my pain; with a myriad of questions on my heart concerning the nameless and confusing events that have invaded my life, again…Jesus always comes for me.
And I find that to be utterly marvelous.
What I’m describing is not unknown to the Biblical characters of antiquity. King David experienced this over 3000 years ago when he wrote these words in Psalm 34:18:
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
He wrote this Psalm as a man on the run. Seeking to save his own life, David had faced numerous murder attempts by his own self-determined enemy who wanted to take his life for the simple crime of being more popular with the people of Israel than Saul was.
We know this because of the superscription
Yet, David found what the woman I previously described earlier discovered, that in the throes of pain, disillusionment, distress and heartbreak, God is not distant, nor unconcerned, nor even inactive to our plight. But this majestic God; this God beyond all human imagining is “close to the brokenhearted”; his eyes are on the righteous and “his ears are attentive to their cry”.
God sees; God knows; God listens; and God is working to bring the vastness of unseen good to bear upon our lives.
What gentle and overwhelming encouragement there is that reality!
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted”
“The language is, of course, figurative.” Writes Barnes in his commentary. “As an Omnipresent Being, God is equally near to all persons at all times; but the language is adapted to our conceptions, as we feel that one who is near us can help us, or that one who is distant from us cannot give us aid.”
It is here I pause to reflect; how many times has life beaten me down, and yet, every time those words come rushing back into my mind like a wafting, refreshing summer breeze?
But it does beg the question: Why does it seem that we humans keenly feel his presence in times of trouble or distress; but not as dramatically as at other times? When the sun is shining and all is right with our world, why doesn’t God seem as near? Theologically, Barnes is correct. God’s presence is as an Omnipresent Divine being does not ebb and flow with the tide; it’s a constant, immutable divine reality.
As Paul argued with the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens, God is “not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.” Or as he argued with Timothy in the last book he would ever write before his martyrdom, he reminds us that we live our lives in the very presence of God himself; for he is not a God who will ever leave us, nor will he ever abandon us.
Perhaps the answer to our quandary is merely one of perception. We perceive, and perceive wrongly, that our personal circumstance has bearing upon the feelings of God. That when all is right with the world; this is evidence that God is pleased; and when the black cloud of misfortune comes looking for us, God has somehow changed his opinion of us. Thus, we only seek God in the bad times because the good times have lulled us into a sense of complacency and self-confidence. We take God for granted and stop seeking him as we did when times were hard.
Solomon challenges us with this piece of advice in Ecclesiastes 7:14,
“When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider; God has made the one as well as the other.”
In his popular song, Hills and Valleys, Tauren Wells gives us some wonderful, biblical encouragement for practicing the presence of God. He sings,
“On the mountains, I will bow my life to the One who set me there. In the valley, I will lift my eyes to the One who sees me there. When I’m standing on the mountain aft, didn’t get there on my own. When I’m walking through the valley end, no I am not alone!”
That’s good advice! In all things; in the varied journey that is life, we must keep
In the end, our circumstance matters little in relation to the nearness of God. For God is a God who does not change. Both sunshine and rain are his creations; both contain unique blessings within them, and no matter which God has chosen to grace your life with at this particular time, let both drive you to the lap of the God who loves you. The one is not necessarily evidence of his disfavor; nor is the other necessarily the evidence that all is well.
But I know this, when you are brokenhearted; when you sit in the aftermath with your broken dreams surrounding you…Jesus will always come to sit with you in the midst of it. And I have discovered this about him, that Jesus is the kindest person I have ever known in life.
And I pray for you, what Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers, that you “may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” for you. Sometimes…it is only in troubled times that we are made keenly aware of how resounding and overwhelming God’s love for us really is.
C.S. Lewis wrote this after losing his beloved wife, Joy to cancer:
“Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore, only the life I’ve lived. Twice in that life, I’ve been given the choice: As a boy…and as a man. The boy chose safety. The man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then…that’s the deal.”
Praise God for this troublesome gift of pain. It is the gift…I never knew, I always wanted.