On Thursday a few campus-mates and I did a quick 20 minute training teaser to our Intervarsity Chapter. The training consisted of a few elements. One of which was Sharing the Gospel in the Context of Injustice. I practiced this training several times before and felt really good about giving it. But while I was standing up there Listening to the training something really jumped out at me. Emily, my partner that I was doing this presentation with said, God knows suffering. God is the only God who has taken on human form, to know pain and suffering. Even dying the worst possible type of death, to know first hand how we felt. God has even felt the pain of losing a child.
Wow, even though I'd heard her say that in practice many times, and even though deep down I knew it in my heart she said it with such a passion that it just stuck out in my mind. Times I had felt pain rushed to my head. All the times I had cried out to God in my "suffering" saying, "God you don't know what this is like!" How wrong I was. God was right there with me, knowing exactly what it feels like. He has felt physical pain, the pain of betrayal, the pain of loss, even the sting of death. Since I was still giving the training I had to focus on the moment and I ignored the questions and the analysis my brain desperately wanted to do about this little few sentences she said.When I got home though I started to let me brain wrap about this subject.
Thoughts about all this went spinning around. The idea of Jesus somehow being 100% God and 100% man were confusing me. The idea of Jesus having a physical body in Heaven seemed to be confusing me. So many questions were just racing around my head. But I managed to narrow down my question to one that I needed to answer. "Why?" "Why would God experience pain, loss, death?" I thought about it, I mean don't get me wrong, I love Jesus. I love that God in supreme wisdom created a plan to keep his law perfect and flawless but also let us be "clean" and spend eternity with him. But I mean, God could easily just done things differently. Even if he sent his Son, why did he have to die? Why did he have to suffer? Why did a close friend have to betray him? As I thought about it all a rather simple answer seemed to present itself. "Why Not!"
This way God in is supreme wisdom did not only save his Children that he cares about, he did so much more. God as the maker is now able to relate to us as his creation in a way that no one else can imagine. God designed our hearts to love. He designed our hearts to experience pain when we are betrayed. He designed us to experience pain with loss. He did this because he feels the pain too. And he sent Jesus to experience this pain first hand. To see how we felt. So that all the times we cry out to him "You don't understand" he can wrap his arms around us and respond, "Yes I do."
No comments:
Post a Comment