A dear friend of mine recently relayed the harrowing details of his heart attack. He is a lifelong Christian whose journey could best be described as rich and varied. After arriving at the emergency room of the hospital, the doctors told him he was dying and they were doing all they could to save him. With this in mind, my friend began to look for some kind of spiritual experience, or even a near death experience. As a Christian, he had come to believe, and had every reason to expect to feel the presence of God. Surely the Holy Spirit would show up to comfort him, to ease his fear, or to at least remind him that indeed he was in God's hands. God never showed up.
Obviously, my friend survived to tell the story and promptly went into depression. Where had God been? Or had God been there in some unrecognizable form? Nevertheless, my friend came away with a profound sense of abandonment. I believe my friend's experience was similar to what Jesus experienced when he cried out "My god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?" as He hung on the cross. Both experienced the absence of God's presence at a time when it would have been nice to have some comfort.
The Bible says "In Him we live, move, and have our being." If this is true, then we are never separated from God. Everything we experience, God is experiencing. God is not watching from a distance, He is going through what we are going through. Now when Jesus died, I imagine that God grew very still, as did the host of heaven, as Jesus submitted to his fate through his own will. The greatest gift God has given us is our free will. Jesus had known most of his life that his life would end in violence. However, his message was more important than preserving his life. I believe that God was feeling the agony and suffering of His son. Because of God's great love (for God is love), He would never have intervened to prevent Jesus from fulfilling his mission. Instead, God joined in solidarity and unity with his beloved son as he died on the cross. From Jesus' vantage point, he could not feel the Father's presence.
Perhaps God was right there with my friend as he was having a heart attack, not comforting or speaking to him, as my friend was expecting, but joining him in solidarity throughout the whole ordeal. Put another way, God was not comforting my friend as if He were on the outside looking down, but God was busy having a heart attack.
When we suffer pain, our loved ones can hold our hand and try to comfort us. But they can never reside us in like God can, actually experiencing our suffering right along with us. God never deserted Jesus, nor did He desert my friend. We are never alone in our sufferings, for God is closer than we could ever imagine.
true dat
Posted by: Cheryl | August 07, 2010 at 10:40 AM