In various ways the Christian is called to suffering, particularly in suffering what God suffers.
Thomas à Kempis speaks of a suffering that leads to growth and
maturity: “You cannot win your crown of patience without some struggle. If you refuse suffering, you also refuse the crown.”5
There are also other forms of suffering. Christians suffer the indifference of others. Christians suffer in their witness and service. But Christians most profoundly suffer the pain in the heart of God that has to do with the world’s lack of shalom and wholeness.
As parents suffer the pain of wayward children, God suffers a wayward humanity despite the offer of Christ as the way, the truth, the life. In prayer we are called to be with God in this suffering as we associate with our family, friends, and neighbors who are still far away from the ever open welcome of God.
Thought
Identification with God involves identification with God’s pain for our world.
Matthew 6:33
January 6
First Things First
While Christian discipleship has to do with living all of life to the glory of God and the well-being of others, there are some central impulses from which everything else flows. One of these key springs of life is the desire to do God’s will.
It is important to be attentive to and protect the various tributaries of a river system. But it is most important to safeguard the headwaters of such a system. The place where the river has its source is critical to its far-reaching, life-sustaining ability.
So it is in the Christian life. Everything we say and do has to do with seeking to live in the way of Christ. But the desire for this has a central
impulse and this is the grace and blessing God has poured into lives through the Holy Spirit.
What follows from this central source of inspiration is the desire to live in and for the purposes of God. To seek his kingdom ways. To do his will.
The founder of the Brethren of the Common Life, Geert de Groote, expressed this most clearly: “let me first seek the kingdom [of God] and then I shall so much the better be able to serve my neighbour.”6
Neither our church, nor our mission, nor our own needs are to be central to living the Christian life. God and God’s way and purposes are to be the source from which all good comes. And it is there that we can find our inspiration and our greatest happiness.
Reflection
The greatest challenge is not first of all to do much, but to do first things first. In the long journey of life we need to be sustained in our doing and service.
Isaiah 57:18–19
January 7
God’s Healing Presence
To know God and to live in God’s presence is not only to live in truth and light, but also to live in wholeness and well-being. This is what we grow into through God’s enabling, our participation in the community of faith and the practice of the spiritual disciplines.
When we live only in and for ourselves we do damage to the very fabric of our being. We were never meant to be the center of life. God is at the center and we are invited to live life to the full with all our powers and energies to the glory of God.
But since we have placed ourselves at the center and are selfish and wayward, we need to be healed and restored. In fact, first and foremost, we need to be turned around. This is the call to conversion.
This restorative work is the genius of God. God knows not only how to create well, but how to re-create well when things have gone wrong. God can make all things new.
St. Augustine speaks about this. He writes: “[God] has prepared for us the medicines of faith and applied them to the maladies of the whole world.”7
Through God’s presence, his word, and his creative Spirit, God
renews all things. In Christ there is healing, not only for all people, but also for every dimension of life, and the whole creation.
Healing can come to my inner being, but also to my relationships, to my family, even to the place I work, and in a small way to the nation as a whole. One day, the whole world will know this healing and restoration.
Reflection
Where does the healing presence of God need to come into my life and in our world?
Exodus 20:18–21
January 8
Trials and Testing
Growth in the Christian life does not happen only in fair weather. The testing of our faith more readily occurs in times of uncertainty and difficulty.
Throughout the long history of the Christian church there have been those who have given their lives for their faith. They faced the great test: faithfulness at the threat of death. They found grace in martyrdom.
Most of us on the journey of faith face other tests and trials. These may be coping with life’s difficulties, broken relationships, financial or health issues. But it may also include various forms of relinquishment, including voluntary downward mobility.
Whatever may come our way on life’s journey, St. Cyprian is
convinced that “God wills us to be sifted and proved, as He has always proved His people, and yet in His trials help has never at any time been wanting.”8
Invited to live this strange dialectic of the wounding-healing hand of God, we are called to trust God’s strange way with us. Blessing and testing. Support and challenge. Growth and pruning. Presence and absence.
While we would like only to know God’s hand of blessing, we also need to know God’s hand of correction and guidance. While we would like the smooth path, we need to know the God who faithfully accompanies us on the rocky road.
Thought
In wounding us, God’s purpose is to bring us to greater wholeness and to deepen our understanding that God’s ways with us are different than our expectations.
Romans 5:8
January 9
New Life for All
The greatness of the work of Christ in his life, suffering, and death is that it had all of humanity in view. Christ’s was no sectarian love, but a boundless redemptive love for the world, so that all things may come to fullness and wholeness.
While we are so limited in our affections, so parochial in our attitudes, and so tribal in our commitments, the towering-yet-humble figure of Christ points us in a very different direction.
His was the way for all. No one, whether great or small, was excluded from the generous love of Christ who made a way for the healing
