Tag: Spiritual Formation

This is my current view.

Weeks into a health situation that has me on partial bed rest, still waiting on tests and surgical clearance, I find myself in this familiar nest of blankets and dim light, bookshelf full of words I love just across the room, window letting in what little of the world it can. It’s not where I planned to spend Holy Week. But maybe it’s exactly where I needed to be.

I’m watching The Passion of the Christ on this Holy Thursday, and something keeps settling over me, quiet and heavy and good, like those blankets: the reminder that my suffering, whatever form it has taken or will take, is not the end of the story, and that the One who authored the real end of the story already walked through something so far beyond anything I have faced or will face that it puts every hard season into a different kind of perspective.

I don’t say this from a dismissive perspective, or even the one that says “just be grateful, it could be worse.” More like… a grounding. A place to stand when the ground feels uncertain.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

There was a time in my life when I would have resisted that. As recently as a decade ago, my heart was genuinely closed to it. Rebellious, angry, arrogant in the way that people sometimes are when they’ve been hurt and they’re protecting themselves from anything that asks them to be small or surrendered.

For two decades, from my late teens to my late thirties, I called myself spiritual. I deeply believed I was, with all my study and practice in various spiritual pursuits. I thought I was strong in that resistance. I thought I was wise, and had a comprehensive understanding of what a spiritual life was.

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18)

Life, caregiving and loss of almost all of my family and friends, many animals I loved dearly, from dogs and cats to horses and one amazing soul in a Cockatoo body, and years of watching what pride actually costs, have shown me how mistaken I was.

I didn’t learn with shame, but with honesty. The unnecessary struggle I created in that closed-off place was real. I don’t go back there anymore. I couldn’t have survived this last decade of so much struggle and stress I didn’t create but couldn’t avoid, if I had…

What moves me most on days like today, watching a mere artistic depiction (gruesome as even that is) of what He endured, is that it wasn’t abstract or metaphorical. It was not just physical pain, but humiliation and agony and the full weight of human cruelty, walked through willingly, for people who largely didn’t understand or care at the time. That kind of love is not easy to sit with. It asks something of you. It asked something of me.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

I’m not here to tell anyone what to believe. But I do pray, genuinely, that any heart that’s still in that closed and armored place might find even a small opening, just enough to consider it. To consider what He suffered, and that He suffered what is, for most of us, truly unimaginable, and He did it so that even when we suffer and struggle on this side of life, we don’t have to carry it alone, and we don’t have to fear what comes next.

After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, “I thirst.” Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar, and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, “Tetelestai (It is finished),” and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. (John 19:28-30)

That’s a lot of grace for a Thursday in April from a pile of blankets… but here we are and I, for one, remain humbled.

God bless everyone who finds their way to this post today. I genuinely hope you find some peace in it.

xo,

c.