Thursday, December
28, 2017
This is what the Lord says: “A cry is heard in Ramah—deep anguish and
bitter weeping. Rachel weeps for her
children, refusing to be comforted—for her children are gone.” But now this is what the Lord says: “Do not weep any longer, for I will reward
you,” says the Lord. “Your children
will come back to you from the distant land of the enemy. There is hope for your future,” says
the Lord. “Your children will come
again to their own land. Jeremiah
31:15-17(NLT)
Herod was furious
when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and
around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, based on the wise men’s
report of the star’s first appearance. Herod’s
brutal action fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: “A cry was heard in Ramah—weeping and great
mourning. Rachel weeps for her children,
refusing to be comforted, for they are dead.”
Matthew 2:16-18(NLT)
Through Jeremiah God foretold the wickedness of King Herod trying to
eliminate the threat of a child who might grow up to replace him. In one monstrous, terrifying night of genocide
he had all the male children less than two years old killed. A night of weeping is bad; a generation of
sadness of that magnitude is life
broken beyond measure.
I have been (too often) with a group of people gripped by sadness over
one of life’s twists – a child’s death, or a loved spouse taken too soon...news
of tragedy from a distance where no hug is possible. And we have heard these words offered as a
sincere, well-meaning attempt to make sense of the darkness: God
won’t put any more on you than you can bear.
I have an idea that if you offered that to the mothers of Ramah that
night it would have brought little comfort.
Their pain was too deep; a clichéd you can do this is just too hollow and shallow…just not
enough. Somehow philosophical or
theological whistling in the dark just cannot blunt the pain of loss beyond
imagination.
Telling someone she is strong enough to bear the unbearable, because God has
given her faith, is not comforting – it merely lays another burden on an
already broken life. And it is that
life, grappling with the loss over the following weeks, months, perhaps
decades, which will learn to receive the comfort we long-for, but can’t imagine,
exists. As with cooking a meal, stirring
a pot faster doesn’t get supper on the table any sooner. Pain takes time to simmer.
A word to the wise: If you would
be a caregiver, let it simmer; just be there to hold whatever needs holding.
For You
Today
Today
I’d like for Dr. Mitch Chase to have the last word:
Trials come in all shapes and sizes, but they
don’t come to show how much we can take or how we have it all together. Overwhelming suffering will come our way
because we live in a broken world with broken people. And when it comes, let’s be clear ahead of
time that we don’t have what it takes. God
will give us more than we can handle—but not more than he can.[2]
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