I visited Bev’s grave yesterday, remembering. 10 years ago we were facing the approach of death as the deadly cancer in her body advanced. Sitting there, grief settled over me like a wet, grey fog.
And then, too, I thought about the assassination of Charlie Kirk and his Memorial service held on Sunday. My heart ached with sorrow for a life ended too soon, for a young wife left alone with little ones. And, my sadness was compounded by the too often awful words stirred up by his death – some criticizing his life and others praising him – using harsh and hateful words in the process. Could we not just agree that a good man died in a terrible way?
My melancholy widened to take in the sorrow of millions in this world who live under despots, in desperate time of war, and with great fear! It was not a good day.
But, I found great comfort in remembering that there is One to Whom I can turn Who understands, Who does not turn away, Who will not judge me weak for my tears. Yes, I am talking about my Savior, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Isaiah wrote of the Lord’s Servant, our Savior, describing Him as “despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.” (Isaiah 53)
Joy is a great gift and thankfully there is much in my personal life for which I am joyful. Like most people normally I would do almost anything to avoid sadness. Should I find myself sorrowing I sometimes look for a way to exit that emotion as quickly as possible. And yet we should know that … there is a kind of maturity that grows in our sorrow that cannot happen otherwise. C. S. Lewis wrote that “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Levi Lusko, a young pastor from Montana, wrote, Through the Eyes of a Lion, in which he tells the story of his daughter’s death. Lenya went to visit her Grandparents for dinner and a few hours later, her life here on earth came to an abrupt close during a severe asthma attack.
Told without self-pity, the story urges us to grab onto God’s promise of eternal life and the Resurrection. Levi does not gloss over his grief, nor does he diminish the real struggle that accompanies loss. His words are not clichéd or empty triumphalism. He offers, instead, a template for applying the Word of God to life, signposts to the path of faith that will protect us from letting sorrow descend into utter despair.
He writes of the new parts of his life that emerged after Lenya’s death. I could identify with his realization that his pain had broken up hard places in his life and made him much more tender. It has happened to me, too. I was once a man who resisted tears, but I am now touched easily by pain, much more empathetic than I once was. It was pain, awful loss, that broke my heart, in a good way.
Levi points out that a new touch of the Spirit, an ‘anointing,’ can result from being crushed. He explains- in the Bible priests and kings were ‘anointed’ in a ritual that involved having olive oil poured over their heads. Here’s a reference - “…the anointing oil that was poured over Aaron’s head, that ran down his beard and onto the border of his robe.” Psalm 133:2 (NLT) This olive oil that marked that person as God’s own, as one prepared for service, as one empowered by the Spirit was the product of a crushing.
A press applied great pressure to the olives and it produced the oil that was used for anointing. Now it gets good. “Jesus, who is both King and Priest forever, when to Calvary, but first he went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane means ‘olive press.’ …. Beyond the ceremonial oil, there in the Garden, Jesus knelt down and was in such agony (of spirit), under such great pressure that He sweat drops of blood. There He was crushed before He went to the cross. … You cannot get to Calvary without going through Gethsemane.” (Lusko)
My greatest desire is to be used by God to do His work. More than money, fame, or fun times I want to know Him and make Him known. But, I cannot do that without an anointing of the Spirit. Nor, can you.
At least a part of the cost of that anointing is crushing!
We need look no further than the life of Jesus. Isaiah says that “he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.” His crushing released the beauty of our salvation!
Do you desire to be an intimate of God, ‘anointed’ for service? Pain is part of the process!
A. W. Tozer writes that “It is doubtful whether God could ever bless a person greatly until He has hurt him deeply.” You may have to think about that for a while before you add your agreement.
If you are walking in a hard situation, if you are wrestling with pain, grief, rejection, loss, temptation – whatever is actually so common to the human experience – offer it to God for His purpose. Ask Him to make you tender, to sharpen your spiritual hearing, and to release the sweet fragrance of His anointing in your crushing.
And always remember – Jesus Christ knows sorrow and walks with you in those moments.
Amen
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