When Revelation Turns Revilement Into Restoration

Abysmally alone, crying shuddering tears, withdrawing to any little corner vacuous of agony, desperate for relief, but perhaps too embittered to go there...

Revilement is that sense that life is too painful to live anymore. And that was Jesus: reviled.

Pain has a way of reviling us. It makes our lives so untenable as to be a berating witness when what we clamber for is the remotest hope. Anything would do!

A person’s pain will break them or it will bring them through. And fortunate are those who are broken before they are brought through.

The value of an experienced brokenness prior to delivery from those despicable weapons of distress is it is all revelation: the very spiritual equipment for maturation.

There with pain goes all our life before us, rendered to mud. Nothing means anything any longer. And yet it’s all so very necessary to go the fuller journey – for we shall see why.

***

Sharpness in the pain,
Stinging beyond belief,
Crying out to God: “I’m slain!
“Lord, hasten to my relief...”

Jesus’ joyous wonder,
Dealing with humankind’s dross,
Every sin slain asunder,
Jealous devil curses the cross.

And here we stand a crying,
How pain’s suddenly redeemed,
Incredibly healed of our dying,
Restored out of what despair it seemed.

Understanding surfaces in revelation,
Pain’s enjoined to the bliss,
Doubled is the Spirit’s communication,
The abundant life we are not to miss.

***

Having been doubled over in pain, and having been angry long enough – or having denied, bargained, or been depressed – we looked to God, for nothing had worked!

Nothing of our contribution of strength meant any avail.

Standing at the precipice, we sensed God was there with us, making no judgment, just encouraging us to take the next step... and that next step was to simply trust.

All of our useless resistance is rendered meaningful only when we have no use of it anymore; when we surrender those chains to our Lord.

Pain is reviling in many quarters, yet it’s so much easier to talk about it than live it.

“How could God ‘cause’ us such spiritual iniquity and curse us to the hell of death?” we ask. In a moment’s revelation such calamity is exposed in the silent second’s revelation. God has made a way through!

Pain is made meaningful in this: it enjoins us to the cross where victory is revelation: enduring the worst anguish imaginable is how evil is overcome.

© 2015 S. J. Wickham.