THE LIGHT OF LOVE IN SUFFERING

 

I was afforded the exciting opportunity to preach at my church’s English evening service this past Sunday.  It was an awesome privilege for which I am profoundly grateful to the leadership of my beloved Pellissier Gemeente for.  I have been a part of this church for just over three years now, and unlike the anointed dominees (ministers) of my church who are also gifted preachers, I do not possess an advanced degree in Theology.  For that matter, I can correctly spell Theology-related terms such as hermeneutics, homeletics, apologetics, eschatology, liturgy, etc, but I have no formal training in any field related to Theology. 

Truth be told, during my preparation, I struggled with the concept of being worthy enough to represent the Lord so directly in bringing His message to His people, because for a great deal of the time, my life simply fails to display my deep love for the Lord or my desire to serve Him fervently.  During a recent preach, a very dear friend of mine used his own experience of observing Brahman cattle going through a dipping corridor on the farm of a friend of his.  He noticed that one specific, stubborn bull would be guided into the dipping corridor, only to escape by jumping the fence.  The bull repeated this behaviour and when it happened a third time, the farmer shot him dead, between the eyes.  That level of bovine stubbornness simply cannot be eliminated, not even by means of behaviour modification.  It made me think….I can identify with that bull.  I might not belong to the bovine species, but I am stubborn, I detest being told what to do or how to do it, and my aggressive defiance makes me jump the fence far too often.  Just like that bull.  Does that then imply that if I cannot be brought inline, that I, too, deserve to be shot between the eyes?  Thankfully not!  The story doesn’t end there.  My friend went on to remind us that, as Christian believers, each of us are yoked together with Jesus and that His yoke is SOFT and His burden is LIGHT.  A few weeks ago, we celebrated Easter, the greatest love story of the greatest love gift in the history of mankind.  Jesus Christ, Son of God, took ALL of the evil in this world upon Him and He paid with His life so that man (you and me) can be reconciled with God.  He was not afforded the mercy of a rapid death at the hands of a skilled gunman by means of a bullet between the eyes.  No, He was mutilated and brutally tortured in the most extreme diabolical way for an unbearably long time before He finally died.  But He rose again and He conquered death.  He bestowed on us the GRACE of receiving the gift of LIFE which we do not deserve.  AND also the MERCY of being acquitted from the death sentence which we do deserve.

I referred to the following scriptures for a Biblical perspective on LOVE:

”Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.“

‭‭1 John‬ ‭4‬:‭7‬-‭12‬ ‭NIV‬‬

”Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.“

‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭4‬:‭8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

”For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.“

‭‭Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭38‬-‭39‬ ‭NIV‬‬

”The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.“

‭‭Lamentations‬ ‭3‬:‭22‬-‭23‬ ‭ESV‬‬

We live in a broken, twisted world where not a single person is exempt from pain and SUFFERING.  Whether it is the result of disease and/or disaster and/or decision, it happens to all of us.  Even as children of the most high God, we are NOT unaffected by the woes of this world.  Furthermore, as chief and visionary of a technology company, I realised that, sadly, the opposite of artificial intelligence (AI) is programmed indifference.  I used to, in a lighthearted tongue-in-the-cheek way, refer to the the opposite of AI as natural stupidity until I realised that it is neither funny nor insignificant.  We live in a time where computers think beyond their programming and people are programmed to be indifferent toward one another.  I connect with the pain and SUFFERING of brokenness in our world on a level so deep that I cannot yet define it appropriately.  My depth of feeling other people’s pain compares, as a best attempt, directly to the level of passion with which I am stubborn, assertive, strong-willed, determined and decisive.  To use the bull-analogy again, sometimes I jump the fence because I FEEL the pain (my own and that of others) too intense.  We do not live in a fantasy-fairytale-world.  God is neither a superhero who swoops in at our command to deliver us and those we love/choose from all the horrific tragedy in life nor is He some sort of captured genie which we can release by rubbing lamps filled with faith.  My family has lost two beloved members in the last two years.  Two weeks ago Piet, my larger-than-life brother-in-love passed away from multiple organ failure following a concurrent cardiac arrest and fatal pulmonary embolism.  He bravely fought a gruelling and painful health battle.  My little sister, Sulette, had her beloved soulmate of 28 years ripped from her side, and as they could never have children of their own, she is now alone in this world.  Two years ago Carli, my beloved daughter-in-love passed away at the young age of 26.  I had the privilege of being her primary caregiver, but in a state of utter powerlessness, I had to witness how brain cancer relentlessly destroyed her young body and how it, mercilessly, sucked ALL the life from her.  My beloved firstborn son, Daniel became a widower at age 28 and my beloved firstborn grandson, Micah, lost his beautiful mommy at the tender age of 3.

There is only One Who can COMFORT us as He understands the depth of our SUFFERING better than we can ever comprehend.  He wants to COMFORT us.

”Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.“

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭1‬:‭3‬-‭5‬ ‭ESV‬‬

I would like to replace AFFLICTION in the above-mentioned scripture with pain and SUFFERING:

If I have to coin a definition for human SUFFERING, it will likely be something like this:

The continuous state of experiencing relentless, persistent pain.  It applies to all kinds of pain - physical, emotional and spiritual.

Although there exist a few inherently subjective measuring tools for pain, there are no standardised tests in existence for accurate measurement of SUFFERING.  This means that it cannot be definitively measured or fully understood.  If it cannot be measured, it cannot be quantified, and if it cannot be quantified, it cannot be studied and it cannot be classified.  But the most important thing to understand, is that it CANNOT and SHOULD NOT ever be compared.

Although SUFFERING can, and likely will to some extent or another, cause us to feel like we are surrounded by a dark cloud of despair, desperation, defeat and even desolation, our COMFORT comes from One Who invites us into His light where no darkness can exist.

”This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.“

‭‭1 John‬ ‭1‬:‭5‬, ‭7‬ ‭NIV‬‬

It is so refreshingly interesting to notice how God chooses to incorporate human-to-human interaction into and attach it to His attributes.  God is sovereign and all powerful, He most certainly does not need us.  Yet He chooses for us to not only receive from Him, but also to represent Him and give what we receive from Him, to others.  Another interesting thing, is that in His LIGHT, we fellowship with one another.  His LOVE becomes complete in us when we LOVE one another.  He COMFORTS us when we are SUFFERING, so that we can COMFORT others.  No brow beating.  No whip driving.  No Bible thumping.  No gunshots.  This is the opposite of indifference.

On Sunday evening, I preached this message, not because I am the most gifted or even the most learned preacher.  I am not.  No, I did it because my life is a living testimony of the faithfulness of God and the truth of His word.  Three years ago, the LIGHT of God through one man’s willingness to walk with us and God’s complete, perfect LOVE manifested in the same man’s deep LOVE for us during the darkest time of our SUFFERING, led to me finding belonging in a spiritual family and community of faith.  Today this man is one of my most precious friends, a God-fearing man who has been instrumental in my willingness to faithfully embrace my gift of writing and who is willing to help me develop as a preacher.  He was there on Sunday evening.

I am comforted with the LIGHT of LOVE in my SUFFERING and I now belong in a community where I can comfort others with the LIGHT of LOVE in their SUFFERING.  God is the ultimate Author of LIGHT and LOVE and my hope is in Him alone.  I surrender to Him only, whether I get to celebrate His miracles or be comforted by Him during times of SUFFERING.