Feeling World Weary

The other night I was feeling tired. Not tired physically, I was feeling world weary. 

You know, those days when all that you see around you in the world is loss and brokenness and sin and your heart has just been weighed down too far. The kind of day that makes you ask, "God, where are you? Don't you care? Don't you see?" 

The days when you can't remember how to not take all the hurt of the world into yourself. Days when you hear stories of slavery and exploitation and abuse in faraway countries and your stomach drops and you grasp for some finite way to help and come up empty. When you long to reach out and embrace and comfort and speak words of truth, but your arms can't reach that far. 

Driving home a couple of nights ago I heard these words on the radio and they said everything I was feeling. This time your heart has had enough, sick and tired of everything that's so messed up.

Do you ever just get so tired of living in this world that has fallen so far? I recently heard the story of a little girl in Latin America who was abused. And I wish more than anything that I could tell her face to face of the infinite value and worth she has as God's precious daughter. I wish I could tell her that God made her for so much more than to be used to satisfy someone's selfish desires. 

God is so good to me. He is the ultimate comforter, my ultimate comforter. In moments like this He draws Himself closer so that we can grieve together in agreement. I so love that God never rushes me through sorrow or demands my joy. He gave me almost two days to feel sad before He greeted me with words of comfort and truth. 

A lot of times when we're sad we don't want people to try to comfort us or give us nice answers. We just want someone to be sad with us, and thats what God did for me. 

He most often ministers to me through music. Today He met me in a quiet place with a song whose words speak to my soul and reach my heart. 

I asked, "God where are you?" And He answered,
I am the Lord your God, I go before you now. 
I stand beside you, I'm all around you.
Though you feel I'm far away, I'm closer than your breath.
I am with you, more than you know

God asked me why I feel the need to carry the weight of the world when it is He who is my peace.

I am the Lord your peace, no evil will conquer you.
 Steady now your heart and mind, come into My rest. 
Oh, let your faith arise, lift up your weary head. 
I am with you wherever you go
. Don't look to the right or to the left but keep your eyes on Me. 
You will not be shaken, you will not be moved. I am the hand to hold

One  thing that spoke to me the most was the line, "Come into my rest." 

Don't we rush around trying to be everything, do everything, fix everything? We feel like we need all the answers. But God gently invites us to come away with Him to a quiet place. To come into His rest and experience His peace. 

Resting in His peace I feel like I can keep on loving in this crazy, messed up world. That I can start looking for the good in bad situations. That in depravity, I can look for reasons to be thankful. 

That doesn't mean my heart no longer feels the hurts of our world. It means that I can take all of that hurt to my heavenly Father whose arms DO reach far enough to wrap around the whole world. My God's arms wrap around the orphan and the widow, the hopeless and helpless, the broken, the lost, and afraid. I can take all of the hurt to my God who is in the process of redeeming everything. 

What is there in your life that is pulling you down? What is God asking you to bring to Him? 

Finding Joy

This week God has flooded me with joy and now I am joyful, very abundantly joyful.

I am joyful because I have finally got into both my head AND my heart what God was trying to tell me about embracing the sad parts of life. I’ve finally realized that sometimes you’re going to hear something sad or see something sad or think about something sad and that it’s okay to take time to be sad about it.

Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean that God flips a switch and all you are is happy and will never experience sadness again.  In fact, as Christians, knowing the heart that God has for the world, and seeing the state that our world is in, we SHOULD be feeling sad.

BUT in the midst of our sadness, we feel HOPEFUL. Hopeful because Jesus has overcome. But I think that a very necessary part of showing the world around us the heart that their heavenly father has for them, includes showing them how he feels about their suffering.

Romans 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

But I was afraid to be sad. A big part of the battle was over control. I told myself, ‘You can be sad about these couple of things and that’s it. Or you can only be this sad for this long.’ I wanted to protect my tender heart.

I thought that if I started to be sad that I would never be able to stop. After all,

Human trafficking generates 9.5 billion yearly in the U.S, half of the world lives on less than 2.50 a day, and in the U.S domestic violence occurs every nine seconds.

And how does one ever stop being sad about those kinds of things?

But Jesus wept. 

John 11:33

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

Imagine being Mary or Martha watching Jesus weep. Imagine how much love they must have felt for their savior, seeing how much He cares for them. That the God of the universe would shed his tears for us.

My God is a God who feels deeply. Every day we are being made more and more like our savior. And our God is a God who weeps over tragedy and poverty and homelessness and abuse. And so we must be those kinds of people too. People who have the same heart towards others that God has. God weeps with me when I am hurting and I should weep with others that are hurting.

Once I finally completely embraced the sadness, the oddest thing happened. I was filled with joy. Instead of being overwhelmed with sadness like I feared I would be, I was so incredibly comforted by God.

He whispers to me, “Yes I understand. That is how I feel about this too.”

I feel so much closer to God, finally grasping a bit of how much He cares. I am filled now with so much joy and hope. Now I call it, “hopeful crying.”  

Embracing sorrow, finding joy. Doesn’t seem like it should work that way. But that’s my God. He doesn’t operate the way the world does. Us with our bumper sticker sayings such as, ‘don’t think about bad things that happen, just focus on the positive.’

God works in ways that seem backward to us.

Ways like,

The first shall be last and the last shall be first

You must lose your life to find it

A man cannot enter the kingdom of heaven unless he is born again

From an increase in allowing myself to be sad at sad things, the amount of hope I had increased as well. The more acknowledgement of truth, the more hope that God gives.

An increase in allowing myself to feel honest and deep emotions, the closer I felt God’s presence, and the more hope and joy that flooded my life. I realized that by refusing to acknowledge sorrow, I was also depriving myself of finding hope and joy in the midst of sorrow.

I want to practice ‘hopeful sadness,’ which is to greive over sorrow and injustice and then hand that greif over to God and allow him to hand back hope. 

"Then you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free."