Rebellion

October 7, 2016 

The battle to bring every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5) is waged not only on the killing fields of lust, greed, anger, or pride. Perhaps the hardest fighting takes place in the swamps, the muck and mire of sorrow. I’m not speaking of the depression and despair that focuses on one’s inner feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy, but on sorrow for this sad world we inhabit. The past three days I’ve sat with a young man who found his mother dead in her home last week, a man who just recently finished his treatments for non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and his wife now battling leukemia and the devastation the chemotherapy has wrought on her intestines, and then this morning with a dear friend who just weeks ago seemed the picture of health and now is gaunt and wearied by the cancer he is fighting so valiantly. I’m no Jesus, but I know a little of what he felt standing by the tomb of his friend Lazarus, weeping.

I’ve had many a battle with Mr. Melancholy, but learned that he slinks away in defeat whenever I turn my thoughts from how I’m feeling to how I can bless others. Studying one’s navel is never a good strategy for joy. But what I’m feeling tonight is no kin of depression or melancholy. It’s a sadness that borders on anger. Anger over a world so broken that it devours the best of its citizens. Anger that I have so often myself been complicit in the cycle of sin that fuels that brokenness. Anger at my helplessness to change it. 

Many of my Christian friends will encourage me to prayer, and they are correct in doing so. I pray because if I don’t, I would end up in a nihilistic spiritual fetal position,  just waiting to die. I pray because like Peter when Jesus asked if the disciples were going to follow the crowd which was abandoning him in droves, responded, “Where can we go? You have the words of life.” Prayer is the lone thread that tethers me to sanity and hope; prayer rooted in Scripture, prayer that often is reduced to mere “groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26).

When John was in prison, he sent disciples to ask if Jesus really were the Messiah. Jesus’ response? “, the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the Gospel is preached to the poor. Blessed is he who isn’t offended because of me.” (Luke 7:22). Not a word of comfort, not a whisper of deliverance. I wonder how John took that reply. Jesus calls us to a life from which we might easily shrink back in fear. I wish I could pray like some of my friends pray, calling down angels, commanding demons, speaking with loud and bold confidence. I pray for healing, but I must confess to having a hard time seeing with the eyes of faith and ignoring what these earthly eyes behold.

Life is a wonderfully mysterious gift. And even in the difficulties and the challenges and the sickness and the pain and sorrow and tears it is a gift and I cherish it because I’ve been able to share it with so many wonderful people. The tears flow only because the love is real and deep, and though my clout in heaven often seems diminutive, the heart from which those prayers ascend is not, so in the midst of my sorrow for my brothers and sisters, I pray, giving thanks for each one of them who have enriched me in ways they cannot imagine, and trusting that these feeble prayers are heard and will be like arrows in the bullseye of this world’s brokenness. I take some comfort in my favorite definition of prayer: Rebellion against the status quo. If that be true, come what may, behind this nondescript facade, I am a rebel to the core.