For some it’s
Mother’s Day or Father’s day. For others, it’s the anniversary date of a loved one’s
death — where we still reel with lonely aberrant longing. For others, again,
it’s a date in history that is wished was never part of history.
If there is one
date that marks the worst of my life it’s October 4, 2003. (And yet, over a
decade on I have only a story of God’s faithfulness to tell. I see that I’m
fortunate.)
Every year the
same dates and events and milestones come. And they may frustrate us
continually, or we deny their power, or we wrestle with them. Some months or
seasons can be loathsome, just as some are joyously anticipated.
***
How can it be
that life has struck us such a cruel blow?
It’s an event of
sufficient magnitude to send rushes of sound waves into the future so as to
rock impending events. And seemingly we are without control. Not only have we
been blindsided in the historic genesis of this pain, we may be backwashed into
the corner of a present dilemma of soul. It’s not just one cruel blow; it’s a
series.
If we are to
settle present events, so as to invest in the down-payment of future poise, we
need to revisit those events of past. But we don’t valiantly go there without being
vouchsafed with the Presence of God.
Healing Presence,
is this about.
Going back there
with intention — the intention to be back there safely, and to feel secure in
planetary hell — is anticipated and, therefore, some planning and preparation
has gone in.
Understanding
that God heals us by his Presence — a phenomenon transcending time — because God
comes from eternity — we go back there with the full assurance that God is with
us; yes, even back in that historical traumatising moment.
It is not the
point that God didn’t stop it. God will not work that way. But the Lord was as
broken for us as we were. Imagine a perfectly holy God in the midst — as a
witness — of such evil! Imagine how God feels about us in our absolute
vulnerability, subjected to the tyrannical mess that was, in those horrendous
moments, about to sweep over us, to wreak such destruction.
***
In the pain, God
is with us by his Presence, back in that very moment.
He who has
promised in the Ancient of Days to never leave us nor forsake us is eternally
with us, and no less in our darkest moments.
© 2015 Steve
Wickham.
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