The Words You Need When Life Hurts

Hi Friends,

REACHING FOR WONDER, Encountering Christ When Life Hurts released this week. I so hope you'll pick up a copy! It's available wherever books are sold. So, get the book, read the book, be encouraged by it, and I promise that you'll be strengthen for the journey of today and the journey ahead. This book really did become the book I needed when life got tough. I think it will be a helpful companion for you too!

Here's a link that will take you to various online bookstores (click the "Buy this Book" button): http://bit.ly/2GLFeiA

Here's the Amazon link: http://amzn.to/2uHAJy0

If you'd like to hear me talking about how much the book has meant to me and my prayers for how it will impact readers, here's the YouTube link to a video: https://youtu.be/wG1hb5fF9xg

And here is the original, unedited introduction to Reaching for Wonder:

INTRODUCTION 

The Bible gives us a single encounter, a brief moment in time in which a person in pain encountered a Messiah, a Savior. A single instance of what it looks like to see his face in the hardest times of life. A glimpse of a hand reaching, a heart touching, a God who beckons us to see him through our struggle. 

I ponder this God for whom simple healing is not enough. He insists on the encounter. He insists I see. When I am afraid to hope, afraid to reach, afraid to pray one more prayer. When I am mute and I am blind. What does it mean to encounter him then?

What does it mean to encounter him in the dark? I stand beside my son’s bed at two in the morning. He lies there, tubes attached, equipment in a pouch around his waist. Blond hair curls around his face, shadowed lashes touch his cheeks, illuminated only by starlight.

He sleeps. 

I do not. 

A breeze sneaks through the window, lifts the curtains. I adjust his blanket, watch for his chest to rise, to fall.

He is alive. For now. But there’s no guarantee. Not anymore. Not ever again. 

I pull out his blood glucose meter and shove in a test strip. I wait for the beep. Then, I take a sleeping boy’s finger and make him bleed. Rough fingers, calloused from poke after poke after poke. He does not wake. For him, it has become a familiar suffering.

For me, the pain will always be fresh. My son, seven years old, happy, innocent, beautiful, and diabetic. Type 1 diabetes, a disease that could steal his life in a single night, or steal it over years. A cruel disease, and a fickle one. 

I hate it. No cure, no cause, no prevention, and no life without the insulin that his own pancreas will no longer provide. I provide it now. If he has enough, he lives. Too much, he dies. It is a delicate dance, every day, every night, every minute, every hour, his life held in the tiny vial of clear liquid attached by tubing through his skin.

So I stand in the darkness and listen to him breath. I test. I hope. I fight the fear. Will the number be too low? Will it be too high? Will I be monitoring all through the night so that this otherwise healthy boy will greet me in the morning? Will I ever sleep soundly again?

I sigh. I will not cry. Not tonight. Not again. I gather his blood on the tiny test strip. I count to five. Five long seconds that feel like a spin of the roulette wheel. Five eternities because I am no gambler. 

And like roulette, there is a number. Seventy-five. Too low. I am not a winner tonight.

I shake him. “Jayden, wake up.” He groans but doesn’t wake. I pull out a piece of dried fruit strip and shove it into his mouth. He chews, eyes closed. I watch for him to swallow, to make sure he does not choke. Ten seconds. Twenty. His throat moves.

I breathe again. Constant vigilance. Constant concern. The life of my precious son, hanging in the balance of blood sugars.

This is the pain I endure. This is the suffering I cannot escape. Day after day. Night after night. Watching, waiting, hoping and afraid to hope. An incurable disease. A beloved son. 

But my pain is not unique. It is no greater, no less than yours. A lost job, a broken marriage, an estranged child, an untimely death, a scary diagnosis, an incurable disease ... none of us get through life unscathed. None of us have life just as we wish it. 

We are not who we wanted to be. Sometimes we are a woman who’s had five husbands and the man she has now is not her husband. Sometimes we live with shame. Sometimes we are a widow with a dead son. Sometimes we’ve lost everything we hold dear. Sometimes we’re sick, lame, and blind. And sometimes we’ve been that way so long we don’t know how to be well.  Sometimes our we want to believe, but our faith has failed us.  And sometimes, our hurt and hopelessness go so deep that all we can do is walk away. 

I’ve been there. Maybe you have too. Maybe you’ve stood in the dark and believed life is naught but a spin of the wheel. Maybe you’ve prayed until you cannot pray anymore. Maybe you’ve come to a point where all you can see is the pain.

And that’s where Christ encounters us. 

He encounters us in the heat of the day, on the dusty paths, in the crowds and the dark rooms, on the side of the sea, and on the road out of town when all hope seems lost. In our worst moments, he comes to bring living water, to break the darkness and break the bread.  He opens our eyes when we cannot see until all we can see is him.

So I invite you to walk. Walk through these stories of the New Testament’s one-time encounters with Christ. See the depth and purposes of a God whose plans and passion go far beyond our healing. They restore our sight. They restore our soul ... even, and especially, in those moments when life hurts the most. 

Come, dare to encounter the living God, and hope again ...

Are You the Woman at the Well?

Hi Friends,

Reaching for Wonder releases later this month! It's time to order your copy. You can get it on Amazon or wherever books are sold.

A couple weeks ago Bryan and I preached out of the second chapter of the book, the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well from John 4. During the sermon, we played a video that told the story of the woman. It went something like this:

Drama of the Woman at the Well (John 4) from chapter 2 of Reaching for Wonder:

I hate this life. I hate what I am. I hate this dusty path that leads to a well dug by my ancestor. Dug by Jacob himself. He was a deceiver, but God chose him anyway. I am much worse. So shamed, so pained, that I trudge to the well in the heat of the day with the sun beating on my brow and the jar rough in my hands. The jar empty. It seems always to be empty.

         And so the dust swirls, my feet plod, my fingers grip the emptiness.

         I hear voices, male and Jewish. I glance up.

         A small group of men come toward me. One drops coins into the money bag of another. “He said to buy food,” says one.

         “Don’t know why he didn’t come with us,” spouts another.

         “Who knows why he does what he does.”

         They walk past me the other direction toward town. And I don’t care. I cross to other side of the road, avert my face as if by doing so they will not see me. I am invisible. No one sees me. They never do.

         I continue to the well alone, happy to be alone. Unhappy. But what choice is there? The other women come to the well in the cool of the morning. They laugh and gossip and share stories of lives I don’t understand. I come now when the sun is at its zenith. I come alone. I draw water alone. I leave alone. Except for the company of my shame.

         But not today.

         Someone sits at the edge of the well. A man. A mystery. He looks at me and I tremble. Why is there a Jew at the well in the heat of the day? Should I turn back? Should I flee? I need water.

         I sigh. I need more than water.

         I avert my gaze and sidle to the far side of the well. I am invisible. He will not see me.

         A voice shatters the silence. “Give me some water to drink.”

         I swallow and for a moment, the whole world stills. Slowly, I lift my eyes to him. He sees me. And I am stunned. Words sputter from my lips. “Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”

         Does he smile? What is that slight quirk of his lips? That crinkle at the sides of his eyes? “If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.”

         Living water? Running water? He makes no sense. He speaks in riddles. But he speaks. To me. And that is something I cannot ignore. “Sir, you don’t have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water? You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

         His gaze turns thoughtful now, as if he’s willing me to hear more than I can hear, see more than I can see. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”

         More riddles. And yet . . . yet . . . If only he knew the truth . . . “Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!” For a single second, for the slightest breath, I envision what it would be like to be freed from my daily trek of shame. To avoid the whispers that still persist. To hide. From sun and dust and humiliation.

         To hide. But I don’t imagine what it would be like to be free. I cannot imagine that.

         Then he speaks again, his words dropping like boulders into my soul. “Go, get your husband, and come back here.” My husband, he says. His face is impassive now. His eyes keen. They watch me. They see too much. I cannot lie. I cannot hide. I should have known I can never hide, even at Jacob’s well in the hottest part of the day.

         “I don’t have a husband.” There, I have said it. Not a confession really, but the truth. The smallest bit of truth I can manage. I turn my head, willing him to silence. Desperate that he speak no more. Please, no more.

         Too late. “You are right to say, ‘I don’t have a husband. You’ve had five husbands, and the man you are with now isn’t your husband. You’ve spoken the truth.”

         And there it is. All my pain, all my shame, my hopelessness, my helplessness. EXPOSED. Laid bare before this stranger at the well. Five. Six, really. The number that defines everything that has gone wrong, that always goes wrong. This is my life, defined by a number twice what the rabbis allow. And the way he speaks it. He doesn’t sneer. He doesn’t accuse. He simply says it.

         It is what it is. We both know it.

         And I believe it’s all I will ever be. I cannot speak of this. I must not. Surely there is a safer topic, an old argument between Samaritans and Jews. Let us speak of that. It’s easier. Safer. “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you and your people say that it is necessary to worship in Jerusalem.”

         He answers me with more riddles. He speaks of the Messiah. He speaks of worship in spirit and in truth. Truth. Somehow this man IS truth. And I can speak nothing else when I am with him. “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will teach everything to us.”

         “I Am—the one who speaks with you.”

         His words bridge the gap between us, though neither of us move. I tremble. He has said more than I ever dreamed possible. More than I ever hoped could be true.

         I Am.

         He is.

         Could it be?

         What if . . . what if there really is hope in my shame? What if this man, this mystery, really is my Messiah?

         And what if that truth is the only thing that matters?

         I hear the voices of the Jewish men I passed on the road. They approach but say nothing to their companion at the well. I glance down at the jar that I clutch in my hands. It is empty. I am not empty.

         Living water. I am beginning to understand. I am beginning to believe.

         I leave my jar at the well and hurry toward town.

         I will tell them everything. I will tell them I met the Messiah. I will tell them we can all be set free.

         No.

         I cannot tell them that. They must discover it, discover him, as I have.

         Instead I will tell them what only I can say. I will speak of the thing that I have always most wanted to hide. I, who, snuck to the well at midday to avoid the uncovering of my shame. I, who have had five husbands and the one I have now is no husband at all. I, who carry with me nothing but guilt and an empty clay jug. I am no longer afraid of what they’ll say. I am no longer afraid  of the shame that has been all I’ve known.

         I will face it. I will face them. I will say, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve done! Could this man be the Christ?”

         And in doing so, I will leave more than just an empty water jar by the well.