It’s a Wednesday. I’m teaching weekday religious education classes to third-, fourth-, or fifth-graders. It is one of the two weeks of Easter lessons. We may have just read Bright Easter Morning, which depicts the events of Holy Week, Palm Sunday through Resurrection Morning, in beautifully done watercolors. We may have just finished watching The Story Behind the Cross, taken from the Visual Bible version of Matthew’s gospel. But inevitably, I’ll hear a sniffle or see a surprised hand reach up to brush a tear away.

These children are responding to Jesus’ suffering, to seeing even so little as an artist’s simple book illustration of the crown of thorns pressed down on His head. As they view the video, they flinch at Jesus’ beating and at the sight of Him being nailed to the cross. Some cover their eyes and peek out from between their fingers. Some verbally exclaim, “That’s not right!” (Many reference Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ—I cannot believe so many this young have seen it– and what they recall is Jesus being flogged and beaten. What we show in class is only a suggestion of Jesus’ suffering, in comparison. These are, after all, children. Some, by the way, are hearing this story for the first time.)

It’s not that some of them haven’t suffered; many have seen more in their tender years than one should see in a lifetime. It seems like every school year, some child will tell me it was his cousin or his neighbor or his someone else that was the person whose murder I heard about on the morning news. Many of the children are pawns in adult relational dysfunctions and wranglings. The result is deep wounding that will leave deep scars…or raw wounds that will fester to infect with more wounding somewhere else. Some struggle to learn, as they have never had anyone at home who understands that a child needs more than school. (In spite of life’s hard knocks, many are “tough cookies” with resilience you would not expect to find.)

But somehow, in spite of their own situations, they recognize that what was done to Jesus goes way beyond anything that’s ever happened to them. I think it may be, in part, because they recognize the fact that brings me, also, to tears:

He didn’t deserve it.

Let Isaiah speak. This is the emphasis that has come to my heart as my son and I have been memorizing chapter 53 during this Lenten season:

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering… Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him; and by His wounds we are healed.

On this Friday that we call “Good” let us consider anew the suffering of One who didn’t deserve it but who went through it anyway. It was His holy, lovely life for our sinful, unworthy ones. Let our tears as we look on that suffering be paused by joy as the realization sinks in…

He did it for me.

Lent 2008 is over, and there are 8 people who are sorry that it is done.

That’s ironic, as Lent is about giving something up, so we always think, and we ought to be happy when we can take up what we gave up. These 8 people, however, discovered that by giving up time, by giving up privacy, by giving up control of their lives, they changed.

In a real sense, they gave up who they had been and became who they are. They built new relationships offline as well as online. They thought about what their lives meant, and have deepened. They discovered that people you have never seen, that you never heard of two months ago, can be part of how God changes you.

In our conversations about the end of this project, which has to end because it was about a season, these writers are wanting to keep writing, these seekers after God are wanting to keep seeking, together. We don’t know exactly what the next project will look like. (We’re pretty sure that there will be an ebook coming out of this project).  When we find out what’s next, we’ll let you know here and on our individual blogs.

I’ve (Jon) been pretty invisible during this project. I posed the questions and themes at the outset and set up the schedule. I’ve been touching up spelling at times and reminding people about schedules.  What I haven’t done, much, is comment.

Here’s why.

I have a tendency to explain too much, to think too much, to interpret what people are saying too much. As this project developed, it was clear to me that I was not in charge. As you read through the posts each week, written by people who usually hadn’t read what others were saying about the same theme, you can see that there was an Editor-in-chief for this project. And so I got out of the way.

Rob and Anna and Connie and Laurie and Thomas and Amy and Tom: Thank you for the number of evenings during the past 6 weeks that I and many others sat in silence, awed and humbled by your willingness to share your struggles in this journey of obedience. I frequently touched the keys on my keyboard gently as I posted, so as to not disturb the fragile balancing of your life and words and feelings.

Those who have read and commented and allowed words here to help you think and feel and converse with God and others, thanks for coming along.

And God, who guided and inspired and redeemed and strengthened these seven friends of mine through illness and chaos and struggles inside and out, who is three and one and three and one and three and one and…thank You.  You whispered “share” and then You whispered names.

As usual, You knew.

Accepting new life requires us to change our perspective. Just as when we welcome a child and shift our roles from wife to mother, husband to father, so must we shift to accept the risen Christ in our lives. He is different than the one who walked among us. Something has been fulfilled. So, what will it be? How will you accept this new life? How will you receive it? Do you need to pinch yourself….or put your hands in His side? Will you accept that you have been called to be different?

After He rose, Mary Magdalene wraps her arms around Him and He replies: ‘Stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.’ When they encountered Him on the road to Emmaus, they did not recognize Him because He appears in a different form. In each of these, there is a holding to what was, what He was. But now, He is calling us to new life. Will you let go? Is there space for Him?

After He rose, He appears in the small room, the small space where the Disciples were huddled in fear behind a locked door. Did He enter through locked door, as if by magic, or was He already there, among them?

What will it take to recognize the risen Christ in your life? Where will you encounter Him? Will it be in some small space in which you are hiding in fear, behind lock and key? Wherever it may be, I can promise you that He is already there and you can pinch yourself if you’d like.

Happy Easter. He is risen.

Sweet savior, you say we’ll see you no more
You tell us you are leaving this evil world
And all the anguish we face
Will turn to joy when you return to us one day

You will grieve
But your grief will turn to joy

Oh my love you are leaving me
Though I’ll wait in pain I learn to wait patiently
And all these long lonely hours
When you return Joy once again will be ours

You will grieve
But your grief will turn to joy

Oh my love it hurts to see you go
though I hope you will return
I never really know
I must just trust in the Lord
to bring back my living spring of joy

You will grieve
But your grief will turn to joy

It’s a Wednesday. I’m teaching weekday religious education classes to third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders. It is one of the two weeks of Easter lessons. We may have just read Bright Easter Morning, which depicts the events of Holy Week, Palm Sunday through Resurrection Morning, in beautifully done watercolors. We may have just finished watching The Story Behind the Cross, taken from the Visual Bible version of Matthew’s gospel. But inevitably, I’ll hear a sniffle or see a surprised hand reach up to brush a tear away.

These children are responding to Jesus’ suffering, to seeing even so little as an artist’s simple book illustration of a crown of thorns pressed down on His head. As they view the video, they flinch at Jesus’ beating and at the sight of Him being nailed to the cross. Some cover their eyes and peek out from between their fingers. Some verbally exclaim, “That’s not right!” (In every class, some will reference Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ—I cannot believe so many this young have seen it– and what they recall is Jesus being flogged and beaten. What we show in class is only a suggestion of Jesus’ suffering, in comparison. These are, after all, children. Some, by the way, are hearing this story for the first time.)

It’s not that some of them haven’t suffered; many have seen more in their tender years than one should see in a lifetime. It seems that in every school year, some child will tell me it was his cousin or his neighbor or his someone else that was the person whose murder I heard about on the morning news. Many of the children are pawns in adult relational dysfunctions and wranglings. The result is deep wounding that will leave deep scars…or raw wounds that will fester to infect with more wounding somewhere else. Some struggle to learn, since they don’t have anyone at home who understands that a child needs more than school. (In spite of life’s hard knocks, many are “tough cookies” with resilience you would not expect to find.)

But somehow, in spite of their own situations, they recognize that what was done to Jesus goes way beyond anything that’s ever happened to them. I think it may be, in part, because they recognize the fact that brings me, also, to tears:

He didn’t deserve it.

Let Isaiah speak. This is the emphasis that has come to my heart as my son and I have been memorizing chapter 53 during this Lenten season:

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering… Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him; and by His wounds we are healed.

On this Friday that we call “Good” let us consider anew the suffering of One who didn’t deserve it but who went through it anyway. It was His holy, lovely life for our sinful, unworthy ones. Let our tears as we look on that suffering be paused by joy as the realization sinks in…

He did it for me.

Recently my husband and I suffered a painful, shattering rejection. And I won’t try to speak for him, but for myself it was one of the most painful things I’ve ever suffered emotionally.

I suffered having things said of me by people I greatly respect that were painfully untrue and unjust. But worse than that, I suffered the pain of doubt and despair because I felt like God had abandoned me. I was following, to the best of my knowledge and ability what God had told me to do and he allowed this misjudging, this rejection. I felt like I had been deluding myself thinking that I was hearing the voice of God in the first place.

And I don’t understand.

But, in the middle of the pain, I had a thought. If I’m suffering injustice, I’m in good company. My Lord Jesus also had painful things said of him that were unjust and untrue. And, while I felt like God had abandoned me, I knew in my heart of hearts that was untrue, that God was still with me, will always be with me. But Jesus, who had known complete and perfect fellowship with his Father suffered the withdrawal of that communion on the cross.

And in my suffering, I get to be a little more like Jesus. And if I suffer quietly, I get to be more like Jesus. And if I don’t try to justify myself or defend myself, but rest in what I know God feels about me, I get to be more like Jesus.

But anything that I have suffered is paltry compared to the suffering of my boy everyday of his life. Everyday he suffers a body that is broken. Everyday he suffers a mind that is confused. Everyday he suffers pain and indignity and frustration and chaos.

And I think of what Jesus said of the man who was born blind, . . . this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.

And I don’t understand.

But I believe. I believe that somehow God is glorified in Isaac’s life, that somehow he is glorifying himself by not healing. And I believe that God has plans for Isaac, plans to prosper him and not to harm him, plans to give him hope and a future.

And I know that anything my son suffers is paltry compared to what the Son suffered.

And I think that one of the ways that God is glorifying himself is in us believing when we don’t understand. And I think in the getting to be like Jesus part of suffering God is glorifying himself in us. The more quietly I suffer, the louder is Christ in me.

I don’t understand.

But I believe.

When I was in high school (in the ‘60’s), I carried my Bible to school – right there on top of the stack of books I carried everyday. It was a part of my “witness” – a way of stating that I was a Christ-follower. My “witness” did more to separate me from the crowd than it did to attract others to Christ. While I believe I genuinely had the respect of many in my class, I was not invited to most parties or other gatherings of my peers.

As a college student I worked part-time in a supermarket. My “witness” was more effective. I was able to have numerous spiritually meaningful conversations with co-workers but I also knew I was not a part of the crowd and often felt marginalized.

I sat alone at the bedside of my dad as he died. Eighteen months later I stood with my sister over my mother’s bed as she breathed her last.

I have experienced the uncertainty that comes when losing a job. I also know something of doing with little. I began working away from home at the age of 13 in order to by my own clothes.

I have experienced loss, disappointment, sadness, and grief. Those are the common experiences of life – the experiences that all people face – painful but they can hardly be associated with suffering. A friend of ours lost a son (age 11) to leukemia; her husband died at 55; her daughter is going through a bitter divorce from an abusive husband. She would certainly tell you that she has experience pain but not suffering.

Perhaps suffering is somewhat relative. When I think of suffering, I think of stories of believers in China who have been imprisoned and in some cases executed for their faith. Or I think of those who have endured enslavement or those in parts of Africa who have been driven from their homes, separated from loved ones, women raped and millions wounded and killed.

Then there are the images from the Passion of the Christ that are still quite vivid in my mind. I only know of suffering through stories and news accounts.

Today, my wife and I were talking about some things we wish we could do. Then we both said, “But, we are incredibly blessed.”

I remember listening to a Chinese pastor who had spent more of his ministry in prison than behind a pulpit. He looked in the camera that was filming his story and told of the growing number of believers. With a big smile he said, “Persecution, good!”

I rejoice that I have only experienced sadness, disappointment, loss and grief. Here was a pastor rejoicing in persecution. I think I am blessed in the absence of persecution. He feels blessed in spite of the persecution because he sees the faith of others sprouting a growing.

I knew she was alive. I could hear her arguing with the paramedics, but I couldn’t quite make out my sister’s words.

Each time I tried to move closer to the tangled twist of metal that had been her minivan, an emergency worker would prevent me. “You have to stand back, ma’am.”

“No, I have to be with them,” I wanted to cry out.

Somehow I tamped down the scream and watched helplessly as two EMTs loaded a stretcher carrying my 78-year-old mother into the ambulance. They’d told me she was conscious; that’s all I knew. But they’d had to cut her out of the passenger side, which had taken a direct hit from a pickup traveling about 60 mph. The door was crumpled, the headlight and right front quarter panel were gone, and the wheel was bent at a 45-degree angle.

With adrenaline pumping, I observed the scene in that detached yet hyperinvolved way where time seems to expand as your brain endeavors to process too much information at once. Even with the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, the intersection was dark, and I carefully inched toward the streetlight to lean against the pole. My right foot was throbbing; I’d fallen and fractured the little toe just moments before I received word that my mother and sister had been injured on their way home from the grocery store.

Closer now, I could distinguish Laurie’s words. My sister, still in the driver’s seat, was refusing to let them place her on a back board, the rigid plastic board ambulance crews use to immobilize a person with a possible spine or neck injury before transporting them to the hospital.

“You don’t understand,” Laurie said, her voice firm even though she was crying. “My neck was like this before the wreck. It doesn’t bend.”

For several long, agonizing minutes she argued with the paramedics. She explained that she’d had rheumatoid arthritis since she was four, and that the vertebrae in her neck had fused on their own by the time she was a teenager.

Ultimately, she had to give in because they would not remove her from the car without putting her on the back board. It was on her terms, though. “Atta girl,” I thought as Laurie gave them orders about how to handle her.

I’m sure they tried to be gentle. Still, she screamed as they laid her on the board and tried to straighten her body enough to strap her down. She was just too bent to lie flat on her back. I held my breath until they finally closed the back door of the ambulance, turned on the siren, and sped away from the scene.

When I first saw Laurie in the emergency room, I gasped. As she had tried to tell them, the cervical brace would not fit, so they had placed a rolled-up towel under her neck, another one across her forehead, and then used duct tape to secure her head to the board. Her face was red and swollen from the force of the airbag when it deployed.

While I dealt with the admissions paperwork, a nurse began to take a medical history and check Laurie for injuries. Besides the neck trauma, her right elbow and one of her fingers appeared to be broken. They brought ice packs. X-rays and lab tests were ordered. Several times Laurie asked for something for pain, but the answer was always that the doctor had to see her first.

And all this time she was still lying flat on her back, still strapped to the board, muscles freezing in place, the number of broken bones yet to be determined.

After more than an hour without seeing a doctor, I became the squeaky wheel, trying to get the attention of somebody with the authority to get Laurie something for pain. It takes a lot for my sister to cry–she has a high pain threshold–and it was killing me to stand by her side, dry her tears, and watch her suffer.

Another nurse came in and began to go over the same territory we’d already covered. “On a scale of 1 to 10,” she asked Laurie, “how bad is the pain?”

Laurie lost it and began to sob. “It’s excruciating!”

Amazingly, the nurse paused just long enough to look up from her notes, then repeated the question.

“Twelve!” Laurie shouted.

Evidently a number, even though it was outside the required range, was the right answer. She left the room and went to get the doctor. I helped Laurie blow her nose and wiped her eyes.

She surprised me when she spoke again. “I shouldn’t have said ‘excruciating.'”

“Huh?” My own pain and fatigue were setting in. I’d been standing on a broken toe for a couple of hours by this time.

“It means ‘out of the cross.'” Her voice was soft, her tone reflective. “His pain was excruciating, not mine.”

Four days after Easter Sunday, while suffering intensely, my sister put her own pain in perspective by remembering the passion of Christ.

I have never understood my sister’s ability to cope with pain, other than as a gift of God’s grace. That she spoke disparagingly of broken bones and what turned out to be a bad whiplash humbled me at that moment and to this day.

The following day Laurie was on the cell phone, trying to work from her hospital bed, with me hobbling around and fussing at her. Mother had a punctured lung and more than a dozen rib fractures. Miraculously, her legs were not broken even though they had been jammed into the dashboard.

In a week they were both home from the hospital.

“Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance. And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). And character [of this sort] produces [the habit of] joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation. Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.”

(Romans 5:3-5, Amplified Bible translation—emphasis mine.)

“Troubles…sufferings…pressure…affliction…hardship”–no matter what you call it, it’s pain. Perhaps physical, maybe emotional or mental or even spiritual. Is there any necessary degree of pain required to earn the name of suffering? This is one facet of human life where it seems to me that everything truly is relative. How do you judge the comparative pain of two mothers, one whose child was stillborn, one killed by a car as a teenager? Is there any reason to quantify the suffering of parents of a child who has walked away from the Lord and stopped speaking to them, versus those of a son who will never walk or speak at all? What about the affliction of someone born blind as opposed to one who goes blind as an adult? One who loses the use of a limb versus one with chronic debilitating arthritis?

But don’t we often try to compare our trials with those of others? And how exactly are troubles supposed to produce endurance? Won’t they just as likely produce frustration and fatigue? When people are afflicted, what they long for is peace, the end of the problems. Do people under siege become more patiently persevering than those with serene lives?

A young man I know has joined the military. His parents have forwarded his letters to me, along with other friends and family, for the past six months or so. At first he wrote daily in diary fashion, and mailed a week’s worth at a time. The letters he wrote during Basic Training reduced me to tears at the thought of the hardship he was enduring. What is the army trying to achieve in these men’s lives? Are they trying to kill them? To wear them out and make them sick? No. They’re trying to make them strong enough to endure the hazards of defending their country in a war. If there are no hardships, no privations, no grueling exercises to survive, how will they develop the toughness, the resilience, the discipline and perseverance they’ll need in battle?

The young man didn’t give up, didn’t say, “This is too hard, I can’t do it.” He kept going and discovered new reserves of strength and skill in himself. He knows that hiking ten miles with a 50-pound pack won’t kill him, nor will any of the other seemingly impossible tasks the army set him in those grueling first weeks. He has learned to trust that a) his commanding officer knows what he can endure, needs to endure; and b) his body is capable of more than he’d ever dreamed of before now. He has learned to keep his eyes on the goal and not give up.

Chapter 11 of the letter to the Hebrews is a memorial of God’s miraculous work among His people. It’s also a hair-raising list of struggles, tortures, and deaths suffered by His faithful. And then chapter 12 begins with this statement:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (NIV)

We struggle and we persevere, because we trust that God knows what He’s trying to accomplish in and through our lives. We have a perfect pattern in our Lord, “who learned obedience from what He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). Because He is at work in me, “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength”(Phil 4:13)…precisely because His power is made perfect in my weakness (II Cor. 12: 9). The success of enduring makes it feel possible to keep going. Hope is born out of affliction, because He faithfully sustains me as I keep my eyes on Him. Peter walked on water as long as he didn’t watch the waves.

Does this mean I’m going to go looking for trouble? Not hardly. “Each day has enough troubles of its own” (Matthew 6:34). And just as God’s mercies are new every morning, so are the struggles that go with being alive on planet Earth. But each one is doing its work in me, chipping away at the old nature and forming in me the woman God created me to become.

Is there going to be a time when there are no more trials, and life is as calm as the glassy surface of a pool on a windless day? No. If anything, as I mature the trials will intensify. Will I notice? Or will I have built my endurance so that I have sufficient strength for what comes today–though if it had arrived last year, last week or even yesterday, it’s not clear how I would have coped.

As my friend Anna pointed out when we talked about this, C.S. Lewis says it’s “further UP and further in,” rather than just further along the level ground. And if the road lies all uphill until the end of time, each step will bring me closer to the One I love. Faith and hope will sustain me until the day when they are swallowed up in eternal Love, eternal Now, where there is no night, no pain, no tears…and no more suffering to endure.

I demanded to see him, to feel his body one last time. I needed to touch him to believe it. I helped to choose his coffin and he was buried three days later, mourned by daughter, wife, friends he touched, and a son. I know nothing of suffering.

I am a father now and imagine the terror of my father sensing death’s immanence, about to leave a wife, a daughter, a son. I imagine the shear sadness of knowing you are dying and it is not the idea of your own death, but the idea of not being with those whom you love. I know nothing of suffering.

I have stood in the room with my wife’s dying father. I have watched death transform the glittering gaze of my spouse into a dull, drawn, darkness directly descended from the deceased. I know nothing of suffering.

I have laid beside my wife’s sadness watching her soul ebb and flow with memory and longing for her father, as I churned with memories of my own. I know nothing of suffering.

I have watched my family’s sudden and subtle shifts as a grandmother, a friend, an uncle, a grandmother, a grandfather, pass away with each year. Death’s disorganization requires re-alignment of rote roles. I know nothing of suffering.

I know of sadness, of deep, abiding sadness and whether 40 days or 40 months, I know I should let go and allow each to ascend so the Spirit can arrive and anoint me.

“then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.” Acts 4:10