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June 29, 2007
Suffering and Love
I highly recommend to you the article and photos of my friend Courtney, which are in the the latest edition of Catapult. Courtney is an amazing photographer, a fact which combined with her compassionate heart for the destitute and suffering makes for a powerful combination that illustrates the brokeness of the world and the manifestation God's love. Courney writes:
"Mother Theresa said that "we can do no great things, only small things with great love" and that is so much of what my experience in Calcutta was. I didn't do anything great. I simply loved as best as I could, and hope that God used that and will continue to use me in the future. Isn't that what he wants of us all? To love Him with all of our hearts, and to love our neighbors as ourselves."
Be sure to check out the rest of Courtney's article as well as the slide show of her pictures.
Indeed, I commend to you all the articles in this issue on sickness, especially Dr. Stan's, which is a thoughtful reflection on the Eucharist and Psalm 103; Ryan's, which reminds me a great deal of the surgeries and struggles my own niece has had to undergo; and Allison's, which is a beautifully written piece, full of wisdom, which is surprising from someone who has just graduated college. Here is an excerpt:
"This is the other part of the story. We suffer, and the world suffers, and we hear its groaning along with our own groaning: the beeps of IV machines, the smell of the cancer ward, the slow fracture of friendships, the reports of famine, the suffering that marks our living in the not-yetness of the Kingdom of God. Suffering marks our identities, and it also marks our calling as disciples. It is in weeping with those who weep, mourning with those who mourn, that we hear the brokenness of the Gospel, the brokenness of Christ's own body, the brokenness that brings us life. It is in the taking up the suffering of others that we know ourselves to be the people of God, called to minister to our neighbors lying in the ditch, unheard, unnoticed, silenced. Before we can speak and act, we have to listen to the groaning, we have to recognize that suffering exists, we have to encounter suffering for what it is in order to hope, to heal, to rejoice and return home. Let us take up that rejoicing in the not-yetness of the kingdom. Let us speak the truth about the world around us. Let us allow ourselves to speak the truth about our suffering world, our suffering selves, our suffering-and-ascended Lord. Let us tell the whole story, and in that telling, may we yearn for the true freedom of the children of God—freedom to tell the truth, freedom to listen, freedom to embrace shalom."
Catapult | By jackdas | 2:10 AM
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