Suffering through Christmas

It's nice when someone asks how you're really doing.

It's nice when someone says they'll pray for you.
It's nice when someone thinks you're amazing because of all you've gone through.

But it puts divine medicine on a chapped soul when someone shares your suffering with you.  They enter into it as much as they can with listening, empathizing, asking, helping, comforting, even sometimes feeling the same things.

That's Christmas.

God doesn't just say, "Wow.  Life is hard for you guys."
or
"I'll send some angels to help sometimes."
or
"Good job facing the trials of life!"

No, He comes INTO it, WITH US.  Emmanuel, is this name that the ancient Jews were told the Messiah would be called.  It means "God with us."

That baby in Bethlehem becomes a man and showed us another time that He would be with us.  Here's a quote from Nadia Bolz-Weber's book Pastrix that captures it:

Every time I go looking for God amidst sorrow, I always find Jesus at the cross.  In death and resurrection.

This is our God.  Not a distant judge nor a sadist, but a God who weeps.  A God who suffers, not only for us, but with us.  Nowhere is the presence of God amidst suffering more salient than on the cross.  Therefore what can I do but confess that this is not a God who causes suffering.  This is a God who bears suffering.  I need to believe that God does not initiate suffering.  God transforms it.

Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, and Mary Magdalene.  When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son."  Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother."  After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said, "I am thirsty."

"I am thirsty," he says.  "I am not watching this from a distant heaven.  I too am thirsty."