Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
1 Peter 1:3-9
It’s hard to believe we’ve entered the Easter season when the world around us mourns as if we were still in Lent. We have entered into a time of rejoicing and Hallelujahs (God be praised), yet our hearts cry out, “How long O’Lord?”
Since Easter Sunday my soul has felt a weariness. I suppose Lent gave me a way to understand the suffering around the globe and cope with living confined within four walls for so many weeks. It made sense to sacrifice during a season of giving up, but now that we’ve entered into the fifty days of Easter where there should be feasting, celebrating, and festivities it feels a sham. As I watch the news, read the updates, feel the grip of the lockdown tightening, my mind struggles to make heads or tails, and my heart grieves. Reality seems amiss and turned inside out.
I am sure I am not alone in feeling I have more questions than answers, more doubts than assurances. Even my prayers are fractured in my mind for when I begin one prayer it unravels deeper burdens until I’m overwhelmed as to how to pray. I desire to pray God’s will, but how do I do that when it’s hard to pin down how all this will work out to the glory of God? It is challenging to one’s soul.
A challenge that I am learning is refining me. It is forcing me, perhaps all of us, to ask hard questions, such as, how will we get past this and rebuild, what is of true of value in life, what is the point of life, who am I if I don’t have a job or money, what is genuine and true, and how can I be safe?
Our Human Frailty
The news alone makes it easy to lose sight of Easter joy when it boldly reminds me of our human frailty. Yet the reality is I rarely leave my home and feel quite disconnected from what the TV tells me is happening and that feeling makes me acknowledge how small I am in this wide world. Yet, it is in putting my life and our world under the microscope of doubts and questions that opens a space in which we can begin to peer into the rubble and cracks of grief and dig deep into the human soul where vulnerability is tucked away. Staying home, social distancing, and self-isolating has turned me inward like never before as I am sure it has been for many. Leaving me to wonder, what will I find of worth? It can be a scary place to look inward, to ask oneself what brings me value, what is the sum total of my life, what am I made of? It can either be a challenge toward growth or a white-flag surrender to a pit of self-wallowing depression. I confess, some days I stand in the middle not sure which way I’ll go.
One morning as I forced myself to open my Bible, I turned to 1 Peter thinking it would be just another reading until the words spoke something immediate I needed to hear. As I wrestled with my frailty and weakness, wondering why I struggled to motivate each day, 1 Peter reminded me that it is in weakness, brokenness, and trial that fertile soil is nurtured in order for God’s seed of salvation to break through the cracks of our hardened hearts and sprout forth genuine faith.
My feeble acknowledgment that I am but dust, here one day and gone the next, is perhaps my truest assessment of life and my surest way toward accepting my weakness as my strength when coupled with surrender to God’s spiritual tending. We are people created to need beyond what we can offer ourselves and this humbling season of loss and lockdown is stripping us all of our false sense of self-preservation. Shedding these falsities can free us from our self-dependency so we can lean assuredly into the essence of Easter living–relinquishing ourselves in totality to the redeeming work of the salvation of our souls and refinement of genuine faith.
This nugget of truth encourages me because it speaks to our spiritual formation. Faith rises out of the fires we endure and Easter living doesn’t emerge out of comfortable living, but sufferings. Hallelujahs rise from ash and despair because the Lord’s mercy profoundly exists in the midst of a world on fire. He endured humanity because of our need to be rescued not because we lacked nothing.
Gold Fears No Fire
We may feel the world aflame and see no sense in why God would allow this to happen, but I feel that would be the wrong way to look at it. Trials, sufferings, and pains will always be present in our world, they have been since we lost Eden, but God reminds us that gold fears no fire. A life of worth need not fear the flame for something precious is being forged as it is hard-pressed. Easter living is rejoicing in the midst of trial because death has no sting, no victory, no power over what is pure, good, true, and eternal. If we are found in Christ, nothing we lose on earth compares to the glory of our salvation being worked out, refined, and made genuine.
I may struggle to motivate each day, I am but human and have my struggles, but I am encouraged that if I muster even a little energy to go to God’s fount of truth, even for a moment, I am given the words needed to walk toward refinement, embrace toil, loneliness, fear and even depression for the reward produced out of enduring suffering is pure, lasting and true.
The words in 1 Peter have refreshed the joy of the cross and encouraged me to embrace the tension in my soul, the challenging questions, and even the muddled prayers because it’s taking me to a place I’ve rarely understood. It’s taken me to where Jesus groveled in prayer at Gethsemane, to standing over Jerusalem with tear-filled eyes, to listening to hate-filled words and choosing to love, to likely wrestling with God asking, “are these souls worth dying for?”, to sheer gratefulness at knowing he decided, yes, our tormented souls are worth it. And furthermore, that our present-day torments, fears, and trials are worth enduring too, not only for the refinement of our salvation but for the salvation of others.
Our Privilege to Suffer
Jesus rising victoriously from death is still our cry of praise, for now, we have union with God, now we have the hope to endure our present sufferings, now we have the compassion to love others. Trials will not cease in the midst of this victory but should inspire us to grab them with open arms because they lead us toward seeing God’s Kingdom restored, the salvation for all peoples, the development of genuine faith, and the hope of our future glory in union with God. It is a privilege to suffer with Christ: this is Easter living, this is where we find our worth and discover what is worth living for, so, may we do so with full knowledge that Christ’s mercies are new every morning and that he walks with us to fulfill the work still before us, even when the world seems on fire.
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
Lamentations 3: 22-24
Thank you for intentionally wandering with me through this season. I would love to know how I could pray for you during this time, so please leave me a comment below. If you need someone to talk with, I would also be blessed to connect with you. Many of us are growing lonely, but as a family, we are here for one another.
