Echoing HopeSample

God in the Mess

God showed through the person of Jesus a desire to be with us in our pain. God is in the mess—with me, with you—when everything hurts, redeeming as much as possible from the evil we experience and redirecting it to bring about something good: our transformation. 

My spiritual director shared some helpful reflections on suffering: There are three postures that we often have when facing pain.

First, we may say, Jesus, you fix it. We direct everything toward God.

Then, we may say, Jesus, join me in my suffering. 

Finally, we might learn to join Jesus in his suffering, which connects us to the pain of others. We may say, Jesus, I want to experience your pain, which includes mine and the suffering of others. At this stage, we’ve moved from a focus on personal problems to joining Jesus in his own pain as he holds the pain of the world. Jesus steps into the mess and invites us to find counterintuitive hope and healing as we meet him there.

God is guiding us to the ultimate destiny of all things—new creation—but the path to getting there is not easy. We won’t make sense out of all the things that go wrong in our lives, but we can give ourselves to the possibility that what was meant for evil can bring about something good. This never dismisses or minimizes the losses we face but considers that even when God doesn’t step in to fix something, God’s influence is always working for our good. 

We won’t ever have fully satisfying answers about why we suffer, but we do have an invitation in the Scriptures to do something with our pain: Lament is the language of those in pain, who don’t box it up but bring the truth of their hurts before God.

Read Psalm 13. After reading through it slowly a couple of times, see if you can identify these parts of it: 

Acknowledge—God is here even when it seems otherwise 

Complain—Lament the painful circumstances 

Ask—Petition God to bring wholeness 

Praise—Offer trust in God and in God’s solidarity with you 

Now write down your own lament psalm, using these four bullet points as headings. It doesn’t have to be poetic, just honest. Focus on either a personal or a systemic lament.