You to Birthday Happy
You to Birthday Happy
You to Birthday Happy
OK everyone join me: You to Birthday Happy
Now that’s weird right? That’s not the way it is supposed to be sung, correct? But you all understood it, because we can do it. The end becomes the beginning, the beginning is the end. It makes more sense to “go through it” as it is intended.
We do that to many things, for example one huge area is how we deal with PAIN. We all have pain in our lives . . . whether that be physical pains, emotional pains, financial pains, relationship pains. Some pains are obvious to others and some only we know about.
The problem with pain is that often we want to get to the end first. That is, we want to get to the part where we don’t have any pain. So we do lots of things backwards . . .
- we look for a drug or medication to numb our pain, without addressing the cause.
-we ignore the pain and convince ourselves that it is “nothing.”
-we find ways to be distracted from our pain . . . TV, alcohol, pornography, work.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish pain for any of you . . . but let me be clear LIFE IS PAINFUL. Often times the best way to deal with pain is go right through it, instead of around it.
Baptist pastor Daniel Vestal wrote, “Pain is not so much a problem to be solved as it is a mystery to be embraced and endured. This is true because God is at work in our pain as well as in our pleasure.”
Perhaps the great pain that you are enduring right now can become your great teacher. Maybe you need to sit with your pain, name it honestly, try to understand it, let it teach you.
For example, maybe you have a great pain in knee . . . well maybe the pain is trying to teach you to lose some weight or take better care of yourself.
Maybe there is a great pain in a close relationship . . . maybe that pain is trying to get your attention to tell you to “stand up for yourself” and don’t take such abuse.
Maybe there is a great pain that you feel from a “non-closeness” with God. Well, maybe you are looking at it backwards. God is not the one you who left. Maybe you need to start talking to God more about life, not just about your problems.
This week’s liturgies offer us a chance to enter into pain. We received a taste of it today with the passion reading. Many times, as Christians, we want only resurrection. That is, we want only “happy thoughts” and a life without any pain of suffering. We want the joy of Easter (full of bunnies and cuteness) without any of the other hardships.
Well . . . being a follower of Christ is to face suffering and hurt as well as joy and resurrection. We endure painful stories of Jesus this week. E.g. how his friends abandoned him, how his best disciples denied him, how he had to face great humiliation and pain, how he even bargained with God to “take this pain away” and of course the big pain of his suffering and dying on the cross.
His wounds can become a doorway for us to face our wounds. His struggles become an example of our struggles. His dying becomes the vessel for us to enter into our own deaths. I hope that you die many times before your actual big death.
That is, I hope that you have many “letting goes” before your big “letting go.”
Join us this week at ALL the liturgies. In a sense, we are given the opportunity to learn what to do with our pain. Don’t just skip to Easter . . . let pain teach you. For in the end, the place of your great suffering . . . can become the place of your great joy. Come and discover.