Opinion

Suffering in silence

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

The images are disturbing, but the viewing audience is almost compelled to watch. It is human suffering at its most personal, its most intense.

This week it is the children. So many times it is the children. One particular image remains uppermost in my mind. A young man, healthy and whole, releases a single tear that courses down the crevasse between his nose and his cheek. The tear falls on the face of his son, broken, bloodied and still.

In so many of these images, the hands exhibit as much emotion as the faces. Palms up, arms raised, you read their prayers -- their pain -- in those open palms.

Would that these images were far and few between. They have become, instead, ubiquitous, a part of every evening news cast. The heartache that is war. The devastation of the tsunami. Katrina. Rita. And now the devastating earthquake in South Asia.

Their suffering is evident. But there is more. So much suffering goes on behind closed doors, behind closed faces. Hands, instead of reaching to the heavens for surcease, clench in angry fists, hearts, already hard, turn to stone.

Is your life a dry well, empty and brittle?

Are your hopes crushed, your dreams smashed?

Do you look back on the days of your life and wonder where it all went so very wrong? The light of ambition, extinguished. The heart that knew love, stone cold. Your garden overcome by briers and thorns, the path before you rocky, your feet bloody. Yet still you travel on, though every day is the same: desolate landscapes, glowering clouds that withhold refreshing rains, the sun, gentle in its first appearance, now mercilessly beating down on your head. No shelter, no shade, no comfort, no joy. And as you look ahead to tomorrow's path your wounded heart cries, "No more, no more."

Yet you live. Another day dawns. You wrest yourself from tangled linens -- sweat-soaked and stained from midnight tears -- and you stumble from a night that offered no rest, no peace and no solace into a day of plague and desolation.

"How long, O Lord?" your soul cries, your mind unaware of the soul's lament. And off you go, into the unsuspecting world, a world that never hears your cry. You are to the world the epitome of success. Walking upright in body, you go through the motions of the day with a hale and hearty smile, a strong grip to your handshake, the indefatigable, "fine," "great," "couldn't be better" responses meeting the oft-asked question, "How are you?"

No one sees the upraised palms of your soul, the coursing tears, foretelling the end of life, the abysmal, hopeless, desolate mourning of every man who has spurned God. No one sees your fists, broken and bloodied from pounding at heaven's door, falling once again to your side, as you turn again, unheeded and unknown.

This then is the desolation of unrepented sin. This is the end result for all who fall into the first and greatest temptation, "You will be like God." (Genesis 3:5).

There is comfort. There is more than mere existence for this broken, fractured soul trapped today in a stiff-necked body that will not bend a knee. There is joy, peace and purpose for every man. For every man who will recognize that God alone is God, and they are not him. For every man who will seek out the heart of God, there is Jesus, God incarnate, God revealed, God defined. Would you know God? Seek Jesus. Would you know God's nature? Look at his son. Would you know God's character? Listen to the words of the one he sent. Would you seek God's presence? It is found at the foot of the cross, in the spilled blood of the one who came to seek that which was lost, the spilled blood of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. The blood, you see, though spilled, is not yet spent.

Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord." Lamentations 3:40 (NIV)

Things you won't see in heaven: Locked doors.

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