HERE…

Suffering can take the skin off our knees and make us howl. It can impose a distance between us and God, making us feel like God isn’t listening; God doesn’t care; God isn’t real. Even Jesus experienced this: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46; Jesus was praying/quoting Psalm 22:1)

But something happened when Jesus died on that cross, and we who suffer need to spend some time inside it. As Jesus moved from his anguished experience of abandonment to his “It is finished,” (John 19:30), we are told the curtain between the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place — the division or enforced distance between God’s presence and our own — was torn in two (Luke 23:44-49). In other words, the distance between us and God, literally and metaphorically, vanished.

Do you see? There is no separation. God is right here. Right here.

But what does that mean, as we sit in the sting of our suffering and its consequences? It means God is accessible, so very much so! It means God is in this world He created. He operates very easily in the order He gave it. He steers, influences, urges our free wills to be open to this order, to align ourselves to it and to Him. If we nurture this awareness, our suffering continues its journey from abandonment to relationship. It comes to that torn curtain and slips through. It finds us in our deep sorrow and leads us to an ability to rise.

Reflection

Think about that curtain separating you and God being torn right down the middle. How does this resonate with you right now? How do you see God present? How are you nurturing this vision?

Prayer

Dear God, suffering pushes us away from one another, yes. We get angry. We don’t understand. We doubt you. Oh, may we take our suffering in hand and rush at You with it! May we give it to you and watch you use it to tear down the curtains of separation that have grown up between us. There is no separation. You are HERE. Teach us to sit with that. You are HERE. Amen.