Reading
The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them;
he delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
The righteous person may have many troubles,
but the Lord delivers him from them all;
Psalm 34:17-19
Reflection
This week, a phrase from one of Sunday’s worship songs has been repeating in my head. The refrain from “Come As You Are” includes the line:
Earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal.
It got me to thinking about all the sorrow we carry at any given point in time. Over the weekend, we recognized the lives of those who passed within the last year, and held their families in our prayers. As we moved towards the election, I think many of us were carrying a sorrow about the state of division in our world. As we come out of the election, there are folks celebrating, but there are also folks mourning that their preferred candidate or party did not win the election. As we look ahead to the holidays, we mourn the absence of loved ones—whether it be through distance or death.
Lately I’ve been listening to and reading material that explores the intersection of Christian spirituality, mental health, and therapeutic models of psychological treatment. In one of the resources, someone highlighted the modern phenomenon that we have pathologized suffering.
We desperately want to feel good, so we do everything in our power to avoid feeling bad. The entire enterprise of modern marketing capitalizes on this feeling—promising us products and experiences that will make us happier and more comfortable—but only after highlighting some deficiency in ourselves or our lives.
We become anxious about circumstances that might bring pain or discomfort, discouraged and hopeless when suffering seems unending, and angry when life doesn’t meet our expectations. To be sure, some forms of emotional suffering are serious and warrant professional care. But not every uncomfortable emotion requires treatment. Not all negative feelings are a problem to be solved.
Sometimes sorrow is an appropriate response to the circumstances of our lives. There are whole swaths of the Bible devoted to lament. These honest expressions of grief, anger, confusion, doubt, and frustration toward God help us to understand our own capacity for emotion and demonstrate that God is big enough to receive our big feelings. We don’t have to hide these feelings.
Suffering is a part of life. Uncomfortable feelings are part of life. Part of our spiritual formation is learning to remain present to those feelings rather than running from them. We learn to grieve without losing hope. We learn to experience disappointment without becoming bitter. We learn to forgive rather than seek revenge. We learn to acknowledge our pain without allowing it to define who we are. We can do this because we trust that God is good, that God is with us, and that suffering never has the final word. The final word belongs to the God who conquered death.
An important distinction is to recognize that healing doesn’t necessarily mean that we get what we want, that God eliminates the thing causing our pain, or even resolution to that pain in this life. The Psalmist promises that God delivers the righteous from their troubles; that may not always look the way we expect. But what it does promise us is that God is with us in that pain and that suffering won’t have the final word.
So, no matter the source of our suffering—our own sin, grief and loss, wrongdoing or injustice—we can bring our pain to God, who hears our cries. We can lay these at his feet, trusting that even if the burden remains, we are not carrying it alone. God is always working for our good.
An Invitation
You might be interested to know that the phrase from the lyrics is actually attributed to a line in a hymn penned by Thomas Moore called “Come, Ye Disconsolate.” This week, I invite you to contemplate this hymn by Thomas Moore first published in 1816 and later revised by Thomas Hastings.
Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish,
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;
Earth has no sorrow that heav’n cannot heal.
Joy of the desolate, light of the straying,
Hope of the penitent, fadeless and pure!
Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying,
“Earth has no sorrow that heav’n cannot cure.”
Here see the bread of life, see waters flowing
Forth from the throne of God, pure from above.
Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing
Earth has no sorrow but heav’n can remove.
Here’s a great arrangement if you’d like an audio version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynDVKKAhL74
