“A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A miracle is when one plus one equals a thousand.” – Frederick Buechner

Deep Dark – Going Through Hell Series – Part 6

Go to PART 1  |  PART 2  |  PART 3  |  PART 4  |  PART 5  |  PART 6  |  PART 7

How is it ‘Good News' that the Gospel includes our pain? Our fears? Heartaches? Tragedies? Abuses? Neglects? Wrongdoings?

BUT, really, how is it NOT Good News that the Gospel includes these things?

The Dread Pirate Roberts, or Wesley as he is more affectionately known, was right when he said, “Life is pain Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” (“The Princess Bride” anyone?)

And now to get a little too serious (like we weren't already…). Consumerism is something we use to distract ourselves from the reality of our hardships and the shortness of our life.

Yep. I’m full of encouragement today, right?! Ha!

God is not selling something through Jesus.

God is not looking to ‘up' sales. He has nothing to sell. Only life to give.

The Christian Tradition is more about walking through that deep dark valley that Psalm 23 talks about, and coming out with joy on the other side, than getting people to a certain place when they die.

God doesn’t ignore our hardships, and we shouldn’t either. Not ours or others.

There is something about suffering that unites us.

Maybe it strips back our airs and graces, our pretendings and pride, and bears our true selves to one another. We spend so much time and energy and money trying to ignore and hide our sufferings, burying them in anything and everything we can, I can't help but wonder what the world would look like if we were honest and humble about our Deep Dark Valleys? If we laid down our weapons and our masks and bore our sufferings and pains to each other.

“To embrace one's brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one's healing, and then one might come to the next step: to embrace another and their brokenness and their possibility for being healed. To avoid one’s brokenness is to turn one’s back on the possibility that the Healer might be at work here, perhaps for you, perhaps for another.” Robert Benson.

The only way to walk through the Valley of Deep Darkness, is to walk through it. Embrace it. Acknowledge it. Wide-eyed, awake and aware. Don’t run for cover, don’t avert your eyes, don’t rush through it. Just walk step by step by step.

Now listen. Embracing your season of hardship is not giving it more power, it’s not giving in or giving up, or anything like that. It’s actually about humility. I grew up in a season of the Pentecostal church movement where something called “The Word of Power” and “The Word of Faith” was a prevalent practice. I understand its intention, but I found its outworking to be problematic.

The idea was to speak over your life what you wanted and what you were believing for. Faith filled, powerful words, promises and prophecies claimed and declared. But as a teenager, what I saw happening more often than not was people not taking responsibility for where they were at in life, or what was happening to or within them, or not admitting responsibility for how they impacted others. We seem to shy away from our human realities by trying to lay claim, through faith, to heavenly ideals.

But faith doesn’t exclude our current circumstances. There is no use denying the “Deep Darkness” you’re in when you’re in it. That's not faith, that's denial.

Faith says, “Here I am, and I am not alone.” It's heaven ON earth.

In the “Alphabet of Grace,” Frederick Buechner wrote, “A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A miracle is when one plus one equals a thousand.”

And I think, sometimes, when faced with the Deep Dark, the miracle is in being able to see where you, embracing what's ahead and walking on through the fear, the pain, the hardship, the suffering…

The healer is at work. His greatest work is done on The Way. During the walking, the journey. The enduring. Pain and all.

Miracles are found only in the wanting.

Redemption isn’t done on mountaintops. It’s won in those Deep Dark Forests and Valleys. It’s found by getting up and walking on.

By the grace of God.

Have you looked for miracles in your hardships? Leave us a comment below.

Go to Part 7 – Keep Going »

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