Note: This is from Sunday…but when I went to publish it, I lost the 2nd half of it. So just getting around now to rewriting and publishing.
I know now that I very well am hearing voices narrating my story. Today the narrators voices were those that sounded very similar to John Ortberg and Scotty Scruggs. Wait, maybe that is because they were the pastors I heard preach today about hope and groaning…yes groaning and hope. They really do go together like two peas in a pod, like peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese.
Pain – emotional, physical – often heard in the audible form of groaning leads to hope. I know this seems like a weird combination…but this is exactly what I wrote about in my post from Friday Pain Giving Birth to Hope.
Paul talks about this odd combination in his letter to the Romans:
But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
This is the spring board that John O. uses in his message to us today Lessons from the Raft. A very cool message – especially learning about some of the language of the day that Paul uses to drive home his points to his listeners.
This is what Scotty talks about in his message Baggage Claim. Grief, often in the language of groaning for what is and what isn’t, is a form of acceptance of our past. It is in this acceptance of our past – a past we cannot change – that leads to hope.
Why? Because it is our past and our reaction to that past in the very present that gives us our current problems. Yet when we learn to accept our past, this produces the endurance that Paul speaks about…the endurance to live in the uncomfortableness of this life – to handle the pain, to be good stewards of it, instead of trying to medicate it, hide from it. Living in this uncomfortableness produces the emotional maturity we need in order to have more character. And lastly this character, growing into an emotional adult…this is what allows us to have hope that we can then face more of our problems – allowing the entire cycle to repeat.
Is this scary to do? Absolutely! No doubt about it – it is as scary as hell. Will that fear ever go away? Most likely not. Yet, yet…we can learn to push into the scariness, the fear – not letting these emotions define us any longer…learning instead to focus on the hope that this “pushing into the unknown” produces.
I see this in the life of a few new dear friends lately. They have been able to start sharing their “baggage” with me and other close friends. I can sense the fear and trepidation as they step into unchartered waters…not knowing where to begin or even how to begin. Not knowing how to trust, how to share or what to share. Yet, they inspire me as they start to get out of the boat. They encourage me as they allow me to roll up my pants and step into the mess of life with them. For while it is scary – it is so comforting to know that we are all in this together. We all have a past that is less than perfect…and we all need each other in order to deal with that past. So thank you my friends for trusting me enough…and for blessing me with the opportunity to get messy with you in this thing called life.
This leads me back to where I began a few days ago…about pain giving birth to hope. I continued to wrestle with this concept all weekend. As I sat this morning listening to John speak, my mind was fast at work trying to put this concept into an equation. Don’t really know why my mind sometimes looks for the math in life…maybe left over from my days when I thought I belonged in that math world. Yet it – my brain -does look for this tie in…and sometimes it helps me make sense of this world a little better. So for those of you that like equations…here is my attempt:
This is what Scotty talks about in his message Baggage Claim. Grief, often in the language of groaning for what is and what isn’t, is a form of acceptance of our past. It is in this acceptance of our past – a past we cannot change – that leads to hope.
Why? Because it is our past and our reaction to that past in the very present that gives us our current problems. Yet when we learn to accept our past, this produces the endurance that Paul speaks about…the endurance to live in the uncomfortableness of this life – to handle the pain, to be good stewards of it, instead of trying to medicate it, hide from it. Living in this uncomfortableness produces the emotional maturity we need in order to have more character. And lastly this character, growing into an emotional adult…this is what allows us to have hope that we can then face more of our problems – allowing the entire cycle to repeat.
Is this scary to do? Absolutely! No doubt about it – it is as scary as hell. Will that fear ever go away? Most likely not. Yet, yet…we can learn to push into the scariness, the fear – not letting these emotions define us any longer…learning instead to focus on the hope that this “pushing into the unknown” produces.
I see this in the life of a few new dear friends lately. They have been able to start sharing their “baggage” with me and other close friends. I can sense the fear and trepidation as they step into unchartered waters…not knowing where to begin or even how to begin. Not knowing how to trust, how to share or what to share. Yet, they inspire me as they start to get out of the boat. They encourage me as they allow me to roll up my pants and step into the mess of life with them. For while it is scary – it is so comforting to know that we are all in this together. We all have a past that is less than perfect…and we all need each other in order to deal with that past. So thank you my friends for trusting me enough…and for blessing me with the opportunity to get messy with you in this thing called life.
This leads me back to where I began a few days ago…about pain giving birth to hope. I continued to wrestle with this concept all weekend. As I sat this morning listening to John speak, my mind was fast at work trying to put this concept into an equation. Don’t really know why my mind sometimes looks for the math in life…maybe left over from my days when I thought I belonged in that math world. Yet it – my brain -does look for this tie in…and sometimes it helps me make sense of this world a little better. So for those of you that like equations…here is my attempt:
Pain + Groaning = Hope + Time = What will be
For those that like the written equation in words, here is my attempt at this:
Hope is what stands in the gap between what is and what shall be.
It is why we groan – because we hope for things to be as they were and
as they will one day again be ~ in the Garden.
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| Will you be on of the citizens of this town? |
