When I saw what lay before me, “Lord,” I cried, “what will I do?”
I thought He would just remove it, but He gently led me through.
Without fire there’s no refining; without pain, no relief.
Without flood there’s no rescue; without testing, no belief.
–Gloria Gaither, “Through”
This song always tears me up when we sing it in choir. (So I will be a mess onstage this week.) It describes the difference between what I experienced in the Pentecostal church and what I experience now. Then, I could supposedly just “pray it away,” whatever it was. If my prayer wasn’t answered, it was because I didn’t have enough faith, didn’t shout loud enough, or didn’t do something else that the nearest person came up with. But sometimes the truth is just that God is with me through the water and the fire… Sometimes I need to know the meaning of the words “crying out.” We don’t like crying out very much in America. We seem to think there is a point when people have done that enough to “deserve” God’s intervention. But perhaps the point isn’t anything about deserving His intervention at all. It is about learning that His intervention comes because of His love, because He is moved by our crying. After all these years of “being a Christian,” I still do not understand that love very well. I still think that surely there is something I could do to make Him answer, something I could do to control my own pain.
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- On travel while at ITD: reflections after day 1 - June 27, 2023
- ITD day 1 - June 27, 2023
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- Traveling without a Guide Dog: Experience with Cane and Walker - October 14, 2022
- Disability and Church, Intersection - June 11, 2022
- Review: When Chronic Pain and Illness Take Everything Away - June 11, 2022
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