‘Myanmar Refugees’, May 2008
We live in a fallen world – a world where we fall often and hard… a world where survival depends on learning to get back up again. There is harshness, rawness – an ever so sharp edge to just plain living. When the elemental forces of nature gather, concentrate suddenly and unleash their power, people perish in great numbers. This is life annihilated, extinguished without meaning. Survivors stand on the edge of a great abyss & question the very presence of God in the world,
“How could a God of mercy & compassion, the very ruler of the universe allow such a thing to happen ?”
The fragility of life on this ball of rock we call Earth, hurtling moment by moment through space. The invisible forces that hold it in relation to the sun in such a way that biological life is sustainable – mostly not too hot and not too cold – that is as amazing as it is precarious. Indeed that there is life on this planet in the midst of the vast darkness & coldness of space is a miracle. I like what Ernest Hemingway says about suffering. He says,
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry…”
There is an inherent vulnerability and weakness in living. Yet it is also built into us to fight and resist almost to the last breath. It is our survival instinct – the quickening that courses through our veins whenever we are in proximity to death. The truth of life is its tenacity, its vigor in the face of death. Maybe that’s what it means to stamped with the image of God.
The good news of the Scriptures is that the suffering of people invokes the pathos of God.
God says to Moses, “I have observed the suffering of my people… I have heard their cry… I know their sufferings and I have come to deliver them…”.
The good news is God hears the cries of the suffering ones. God is not an abstraction dwelling in the lonely splendor of eternity. God is concretion itself – present and accessible – suffering alongside his people.
