Thursday, October 3, 2019
The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words. I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him. So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord. Lamentations 3:19-26[2]
Jeremiah, fierce, sword-wielding prophet,
is the author of Lamentations. He is the
one we find wallowing in his suffering and homelessness, grieving over his loss. Jeremiah’s homelessness is not what we’d
picture in our time, sleeping on park benches, begging on street corners, tents
in the woods or nights huddled in an old abandoned car. Jeremiah was in prison; his home and the
entire nation was occupied by the enemy.
His was a broken nation. His
conclusion, that it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the
Lord was not a spiritual high ground…Jeremiah had no choice.
Suffering, and what you do with it, have
filled libraries of books for generations.
Ever since Job’s loss of his family, wealth, friends, and place in the
community, coupled with the boils that covered his body in torment, humankind
has searched for the why of suffering, and the what
of how to deal with it.
My friend, Bert Cavaletto learned to deal
with Jeremiah and Job’s suffering. Bert
was a pilot in World War 2 who spent a long time in a prison camp. Among a myriad of coping skills developed to
ward off despair, Bert constructed a model ship which he completed while hiding
it from his captors. I saw the ship just
before Bert died in 2014. There was such
painstaking detail; each plank of the deck, turnbuckle, stanchion and battens
were either carved or fashioned with tools that would have been seen as weapons
by the guards. While it was a diversion
from the reality of being a prisoner, this ship was also Bert’s sanity project,
and the expression of genuine hope in salvation. Like Jeremiah, who purchased a piece of
property while in prison against the day when he might be released to a freed
homeland – something which he never got to see, however – Bert’s ship
represented the freedom one experiences on open seas. It was his statement of hope! It was his unbroken spirit claiming the
promise of God that he was not forgotten.
I have come to understand that unforgotten
and unbroken go together.
They belong and hold to one another like night frames day, and young
meets old. They are as integral to
understanding God’s love as breathing is to staying alive in a prison camp,
whether it be a military prison, or the prison of our thoughts and unrequited
dreams.
From the mouth of Jesus (by way of John
the Revelator) we hear the words of our Creator’s promise that suffering faithfully
leads to the strength that only brokenness brings, a crown of life to wear long
after a dying world passes away:
Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer. The devil will throw some of you into prison to test you. You will suffer for ten days. But if you remain faithful even when facing death, I will give you the crown of life. “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. Whoever is victorious will not be harmed by the second death. Revelation 2:10-11
For You Today
How else can you genuinely
face and overcome the brokenness, emptiness, hurt and crushing blows of lost
hope, except to trust that God has not lied?
This was the experience of the apostle Paul and my friend, Bert:
We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. 2 Corinthians 4:8-10
This is what it means to be battered,
and yet unbroken!
Go to VIDEO
[1]
Title Image: Russell Brownworth
photographs Unless noted, Scripture used
from The
New Living Translation©
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