Lent is a painful time. If thought about deeply, it’s easy to see how this is a journey to pain, to loss, to isolation. We don’t like that, of course; perhaps that is why the churches I grew up in never even mentioned it (and that’s probably why I never brought it to Numinous….just not my tradition and don’t want the pain, the loss).
Last year during Lent, one of my students faced a minor crisis that could have been a tragedy…her 20 year old son had a bad accident on Spring Break and had head trauma. We talked together while he dealt with surgery and recovery. I shared prayers and spiritual thoughts with her; she cried with me. Looks like he is going to pull out okay, but in the process, she shared this:
“I know God is in control. It is just that when He allowed cancer to take my husband just 3 years ago, I am concerned that His will may not match my desire for a quick and full recovery from this [injury to her son]. “
So, I shared back with her something I was learning then, learning previously and still learning today. It once again is a combination of something I am reading in Oswald Chambers and this other writer, Christian Wiman. They both were writing about loss and suffering…probably apropos for me to be reading this during Lent.
First, check out what Wiman wrote in his excellent, moving work My Bright Abyss: “there are three ways to deal with the fear of dying, of nothingness, of failure, of the seeming pointlessness of life….the third way is the way of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, pleading for release from his fate, abandoned by God. 
In this, we must take hold with great faith and hope that God is really for us, really with us. That takes me, through Chambers, to Romans 8:37–”No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him.” Do you remember what “these things” are—well, go read vv. 35-36—not a pretty list that Paul and God recount for us: trouble, calamity, persecution, hunger, cold, danger, threatened with death.
So check out what Chambers says:
We are super-victors with a joy that comes from experiencing the very things which look as if they are going to overwhelm us.Huge waves that would frighten an ordinary swimmer produce a tremendous thrill for the surfer who has ridden them. Let’s apply that to our own circumstances. The things we try to avoid and fight against— tribulation, suffering, and persecution— are the very things that produce abundant joy in us. “We are more than conquerors through Him” “in all these things”; not in spite of them, but in the midst of them. A saint doesn’t know the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation, but because of it. Paul said, “I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulation” (2 Corinthians 7:4).
The undiminished radiance, which is the result of abundant joy, is not built on anything passing, but on the love of God that nothing can change. And the experiences of life, whether they are everyday events or terrifying ones, are powerless to “separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).
I am pretty sure Chambers is right….Paul is saying through OR in those things, or maybe while those things are going on….not necessarily because of those things….we are conquerors.
So, back to Wiman….that fact must give us hope. Christ is with us. Right now. Here. Let me start with the last sentence of Wiman’s that I showed you above: “It is through all these trials in our own lives, these fears however small, that we come close to Christ, if we can learn to say with him, “not my will, Lord, but yours.” This is in no way resignation, for Christ still had to act. We all have to act, whether it’s against the fears of our daily life or against the fear that life itself is in danger of being destroyed [or the fear that your acting, your acts, are meaningless]. And when we act in the will of God, we express hope in its purest and more powerful form, for hope, as Vaclav Havel has said, is a condition of your soul, not a response to the circumstances in which you find yourself. Hope is what Christ had in the Garden, though he had no reason for it in terms of events, and hope is what He has right now, in the garden of our own griefs.”
YOU HAVE TO ACT! Our pain, our sadness, our fears of being let down by the community, by someone who promised us….our aloneness, our frustration at the acts of others that seem so evil….those things cannot hinder our forward walk OUT of the Garden and towards whatever is next….and often that “next” maybe more painful that the last thing.
One more thought, then, from Wiman…in that sense of facing the painful next thing, we often want to rely on what we percieve are our strengths. Yet, God tells us that He will so often use the foolish things, the weak things, to accomplish His purpose. We know that is true in how he approaches his larger goals in the world, so then, I think, He does the same thing to accomplish his goals WITHIN my life, on my inside. So, check this out, again from Wiman:
in the end the very things that have led us to God are the things we must sacrifice. The capacities that we have developed and refined, that have enabled us to perceive some endlessly creative absence at the center of this life, some vitality in the void–in the end these gifts must be given entirely away.
“given entirely away” does not necessarily mean “never to return” but rather more of a “rely only on Jesus, not on your supposed powers.” When we turn to our strengths, to our perceived place of best work, we may end up leaving the Garden attempting to walk in our own power. We need, instead, to leave the Garden walking only in the hope of the Lord, aware that we have nothing….”my God, my God, why have you abandoned me…let this cup of bitterness pass”….BUT hope.
As you head into these last weeks of Lent, come closer to Christ through the sense of loss that Lent means. Rejoice because you know He truly is with you, and though the pain may indeed be great, the disappointment deep, walk out of the Garden knowing He is with you and through your pain, you are more than a conqueror. And there, you KNOW the joy of the Lord…and that is a good thing.