Route 5

Henri Nouwen said this "I see millions of lonely, starving faces all over the world, and large piles of dead bodies of people killed in cruel wars and ethnic conflict. Whose cup is this? It is our cup, the cup of human suffering. For each of us our sorrows are deeply personal. For all of us our sorrows, to are universal." (From "Can you drink this cup")


I wonder this..can I drink the cup of suffering...not just my own but the suffering of the world. I can not on my own. I can only bear it with the Holy Spirit power. I think it is one of the greatest paradoxes ...how suffering is so isolating but yet so universal. I wonder it if it is what the Evil one does with this our universal suffering..make us feel alone in it. It is his snare..the lie that no one else can understand. Our culture has bought it hook line and sinker. That only cancer patients relate to other cancer patients or mom's of kids with special needs relate to there mom's with kids with special needs. We need small groups of people just like us..in the same "demographic."
Is it that we think Jesus will understand us if we are around other people who are like us?

We have an even greater fear that if people really knew us they wouldn't like us. Often because we live in a society that doesn't know what to do with pain. We think that our response to our suffering and pain will be unacceptable to others because it is often times ugly. So in our response we will be unacceptable to others. So, we mask it, hide it or simply deny it is even there. What a waist. How lonely

Jesus at the last supper took the cup of redemption at the passover meal and said we should drink it and remember what he was about to do....that is Redeem us. So when we share in this cup with him we can not redeem but we make ourselves subjected to the process of redemption. We come in line with what He is doing. We, in our own pain and in bearing up with others in their pain, take the cup and we say "Jesus redeem this pain." We make it (the suffering) subjected to the work of the CROSS and it is made redeemable.

This morning I thank God for this. I thank him that every thing that man meant for evil He turns for good for those who trust Him. This is good because I am a man who has done evil and how has experienced it and seen it up close and watch it from afar. My hope is that HE is the REDEEMER and has a mighty plan of making it good. This turns my little isolated experience into part of a grand universal story of redemption. May we confess it and may we let our light reflect that to the world who is looking for it..even if they don't realize it. May we lean into it..and be embraced.