Bless and Enable

 

I'm combining Five Minute Friday (enable) with the Rethink Church Lent challenge (bless).

I've been blessed particularly in the last twelve months with good friends: people who have really been there for me by texting or ringing, dropping off meals so Adi didn't have to cook, and sending cards, flowers and gifts. 

I had a WhatsApp video call yesterday with an old friend with whom I used to work. We haven't spoken for a few years and she listened as I relayed rather a woeful tale of mental and physical ill health to her. She didn't try to fix me or minimise my pain, meaning I felt heard and safe. She did direct me to this YouTube song which I've listened to twice since speaking with her.

The truth in this song is enabling me to keep going in what is possibly the darkest, most difficult season of my life. Hear what Job and Shane & Shane and John Piper and God are saying: for the believer, no pain is for nothing. It is earning for us an eternal weight of glory. Right now, I'm choosing to believe that. 

It is important that pain is acknowledged and that we sit with each other in our pain, grief and anger, not minimising or spiritualising it away. It's okay not to be okay. We can be hurting and broken now but it's not for nothing. God has a purpose in it even though we mostly can't begin to understand. That's why He's bigger than us. His thoughts aren't our thoughts and His ways are higher than ours. But that doesn't mean He doesn't sit with us in our pain and count our tears in His bottle (or an equivalent if, like me, you find it near impossible to cry).