Blessings and suffering

Here's a bit from Nicholas Wolterstorff's "Lament for a Son." Wolterstorff lost his son to a hiking accident and in the course of the book he struggles to understand suffering and God's role in it. Towards the very end of the book he writes:
"Suffering may do us good - may be a blessing, something to be thankful for. This I have learned.
Ordinarily we think of the powerful and wealthy as blessed; they enjoy the 'good things of life.' But maybe the little ones, the downtrodden peoples and assaulted persons, are blessed as well. I do not mean that they will be compensated for their sufferings. I mean that perhaps the treading down it itself a blessing, or can become a blessing, rich as any coming to those we call 'the lucky ones.'
Suffering is the shout of 'No' by one's whole existence to that over which one suffers - the shout of 'No' by nerves and gut and heart to pain, to death, to injustice, to depression, to hunger, to humiliation, to bondage, to abandonment. And sometimes, when the cry is intense, there emerges a radiance which elsewhere seldom appears: a glow of courage, of love, of insight, of selflessness, of faith. In that radiance we see best what humanity was meant to be.
That the radiance which emerges from acquaintance with grief is a blessing to others is familiar, though perplexing: How can we thank God for suffering's yield while asking for it's removal? But what I have learned is something stranger still: Suffering may be among the sufferer's blessings. I think of a former colleague who, upon recovery from a heart attack, remarked that he would not have missed it for the life of him.
In the valley of suffering, despair and bitterness are brewed. But there also character is made. The valley of suffering is the vale of soul-making.
But now things slip and slide around. How do I tell my blessings? For what do I give thanks and for what do lament? Am I sometimes to delight over my sorrow? And how do I sustain my 'No' to my son's early death while accepting with gratitude the opportunity offered of becoming what otherwise I could never be?
How do I receive my suffering as a blessing while repulsing the obscene thought that God jiggled the mountain to make me better?"

When I read that it reminded me of Jesus speaking about blessing - and how odd his list of blessings were, the poor, the hungry, the sufferers, and yet maybe they're not so far off the mark:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 5:3-10

Why Easter matters . . .

John 11:17-26: On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home."Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

Recently it seems like a lot of people around me are struggling with losing a loved one and all that it entails -- fear, sadness, regret, simply missing them. And all these feelings are so real, and not something we can easily push aside (as one friend remarked recently, "you never get over your need for a mother or a father." Or for that matter a grandmother or grandfather, brother or sister, son or daughter, or friend) . And yet, if Christian faith says anything important about anything, it says something important about death and life after death. If we believe that Easter matters, that God overcame death for our sakes so that death would not be the period at the end of our lives, then there is hope. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 (one of my all-time favorite chapters) that if we don't believe that Jesus was raised from the dead that our faith is worthless and those who have passed away are lost. And so we live with this hope, in the face of death, that those we loved and lost are not lost to God and ultimately not lost to us.

Lauren Winner in Girl Meets God writes, "This is a theme that C.S Lewis, the Oxford do and Christian apologist, sounded again and again. This earthly life, even for church-goers, is a mere shadow land, but soon we will live resurrected int the bright glory of reality. The Last Battle, the final volume of Lewis's Narnia chronicles, pictures the end of time. Aslan -- the lion who represents Jesus -- has returned, folding all of culture and humanity into his kingdom. In the novel's last pages, he tells Lucy, a child from London, the everyone she knew back in Blighty is dead and raised to new life. And as Aslan spoke, writes Lewis, 'the things that began to happen . . . were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.' On Easter, we glimpse the beginning of Chapter One."

Here we go . . .

I'm jumping on the blogging bandwagon with hopes that having a blog will motivate me to write more and get some thoughts down - so we'll see how this goes

And to all you Crossroads and Seekers out there, hope you will join me on the journey . . .