When our granddaughter Teagan was 2 years old she would climb into bed with Gayle and me at the crack of dawn. Then she would look me in the face and say, “PaPa, glasses on!” At first I thought she just wanted us to get up and get out of bed. But as soon as I put my glasses on, Teagan was happy to stay in bed with us. Thinking I could catch a little more shuteye I took my glasses off and lay back. But Teagan wasn’t having it. “No PaPa,” she chided with furrowed brow, “Glasses on!”
As I picked them up again she placed the flat of her hand against the lenses and “helped” me push them on my face. You see, PaPa wears glasses. Whoever I am without my glasses, I am not
PaPa.
Teagan is 4½ half now and she is still uncomfortable talking with Gayle or me unless we have our glasses on because that is how we are expected to appear.
God’s face appears wearing the blessings he puts in our lives… a steady income, our most important relationships, our health or the health of our loved ones. These blessings aren’t God himself, but they help us recognize his presence. They are the “glasses” God wears and without them we have trouble recognizing him.
And just like Teagan, we have trouble communicating with someone we don’t recognize. A crisis of faith occurs when a loss is so devastating that it seems to crucify the God we thought we knew. When these very vital incarnations of God… a spouse, a child, a way of life… are first taken, we look for Him in confusion and find only a sealed tomb of broken remains.
I have heard it said that Christians frequently skip over Good Friday on the way to Easter, meaning we try to rejoice in the resurrection of God’s love without first living with the awful pain and devastating loneliness of losing God in the first place.
Yes, our theology rightly insists that we don’t actually lose God in any event no matter how upending it may feel. But you couldn’t tell that to Peter or one of the Marys on Good Friday. Besides, the truth is they did lose Jesus for a time and it took some doing before they were able to recognize the “new” resurrected Jesus—even when he walked and ate with them.
Our loss is not of Jesus per se, but the sight of him in any form that we are able to recognize. God takes his glasses off!
A broken heart begins to be healed by faith when it offers its sorrow, fear, disappointment and even its anger to God as an invitation for him to come closer. Thewarrior King David wrote many psalms about sorrow, tears and weeping before God. David believed that God didn’t ignore him or even tap his foot in impatience until David “got over it.” David believed that God listened like a friend and took it all in.
When Mary wept in grief at the loss of her brother Lazarus, Jesus was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” His response was to weep with Mary and her friends. When God shares his heart with us on the occasion of some great grief that occasion becomes a moment of intimate friendship with him.
In that sharing, we receive a down payment on what is to come for all believers, a taste of the coming reunion with God in which he will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
It is an act of faith to mix our tears with God’s… to pray our sorrow to Him. It is easier to trust God, knowing that our deep sorrow breaks his heart as well as our own, even if we do not always understand him. That trust makes it easier to recognize God with his glasses off.
What happens next will be very unique to each person and their relationship with God. I wish I could be more specific on how God will become recognizable again. But I do know that a bridge between God and us is built when we pray with honest, hopeful sorrow. Though I can’t say how or even when it will happen, I can tell you that Jesus will cross that bridge. He will meet with us. And there will be healing in that meeting!
Each month a member of the
Cook County Ministerium will
offer Spiritual Reflections. For
April, our contributor is Pastor
Dave Harvey, who has served
as pastor of Grand Marais
Evangelical Free Church since
February of 2008.
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