This week we want to share with you a devotion written by Casey Page Culbreth entitled, “Suffering and Hope.” Casey Page Culbreth is a worship pastor at Grace Church in Cape Coral, Florida.
CONSIDER THIS
My dad has dementia. My family found out about it three years ago and we have been walking together through the progression of this disease ever since. I’m an only child and my biggest fear has always been losing my parents. I’m watching my greatest fear come true with my dad, little bit by little bit.
This past year we had to have a conversation with dad about the need for him not to drive anymore. I was surprised to find myself leading the conversation. I was the one to ask my father, my authority, to give away the last vestige of his independence.
I tried to be positive throughout the conversation and dad was also trying to handle it with grace. The only one crying was my mother. But afterwards, when I said goodbye and hit the end button (we were talking on Skype since I live far away), this numb mix of sadness, anger, and disbelief came over me. I walked like a zombie to my bedroom and got ready for bed.
It wasn’t until later, as I was trying to go to sleep, that the tears came. I began to heave deep groans that I couldn’t stop. I started to yell at the empty room, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
In that moment, I desperately needed to feel God’s presence. I needed to hear him tell me that he was here, that there was hope for my dad and for my family. But I felt nothing and heard nothing. The lack of that felt assurance that my Abba was with me hurt just as much as the reality of slowly losing my father.
Our sufferings bend us low with our faces hard pressed toward the ground.
We all have leprous sores somewhere that give us such pain.
We cry out to God with the Israelites,
Oh that you would burst from the heavens and come down!
These kinds of cries are Advent cries. Advent is the season to allow ourselves to heave, to scream, to cry over our own lives and in solidarity with the screams and cries of the world.
The leper in the Gospel of Luke was near death, simply existing in the last stages of his disease. Perhaps he had lost the assurance that God was with him like I had as I cried over my father.
But that wasn’t the end of his story . . . and it’s not the end of mine…and it’s not the end of yours.
God did come down…and he walked with his own dusty feet into this man’s valley of death.
Oh, that you would burst through the heavens and come down!
Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!”
I don’t always feel that God is with me. I can often despair that perhaps he is not. At the same time, there are moments when I encounter such sparks of unexpected beauty. In these moments, exultant joy overflows within me as I remember that I am the beloved and that God is truly here.
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