I AM with You

I am with you, He says.  In the darkness, in the quiet, in the joy, in the pain—I am there.  I always have been.  You are never alone.

Do you hear His voice?

In these past two weeks, my heart has felt the weight of pain not my own.  I have cried tears of suffering, suffering that I myself did not experience.  It physically hurt me to hear the story of someone I love who endured not months but years of neglect, to hear the pain in that rejection and loneliness.  To hear the story of tragic loss as a mother loses yet another child to the murderous power of the gangs in her neighborhood.  To hear the shaking voice of a man sharing his story of losing 21 members of his family in one day to a landslide, one man among many who lost loved ones that day.  To hear the agony in the voice of a close friend who suffered physical and sexual abuse as a small child from those who were supposed to protect her and love her.  To hear of a young soul who could no longer bear the weight of the world and so tragically cut his own life short.  Story after story after story. 

In those moments, I could do nothing.  I could not comfort them.  I could not bring back their loved ones.  I could not heal them, make their lives whole again, give them peace.  In my completely helplessness, I could do nothing but obey the Spirit and weep with my fellow brothers and sisters.

Do you know what word kept running through my mind as I heard these stories?  Immanuel.  Literally God with us.  I AM WITH YOU, His voice whispered to me.  I AM WITH ALL OF YOU, AS I ALWAYS HAVE BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE.

Really, God?  You were there?  In those moments when your children needed you most, you were there?  Where?  You didn’t save them.  You didn’t wipe away their tears.  You didn’t protect them from the rivers of mud, from the gun’s bullet, from the abusive hands.  You didn’t.  So how can you say you were there??

Because He was there, even when we didn’t have the eyes to see Him. 

Every beating, every abandonment, every loss, every death—God felt every single one of those.  In those intense moments of hurting, God hurt too.  That’s what Immanuel means.  Not God by us, not God around us, not God above us or beneath us…  No.  God with us:  “…whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me” (paraphrase of Matt. 25:40).  None of us was ever alone.  Ever.

I don’t know why but this gives me such Hope.  “In Christ we see God suffering – for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope” (Henri Nouwen).   Our suffering ties us not only to God in an unbreakable bond, but also to others around us who are suffering as well.  We are led to lives of great compassion, literally "to suffer with", to seek out the outcast, the hurting, the persecuted, the lonely and to bear their burden with them, recognizing that this is “the way to the truth that we are most ourselves, not when we differ from others, but when we are the same” (Henri Nouwen).  We are called to solidarity, to togetherness, with our brothers and sisters.  We weep with our weeping brethren; we rejoice when they rejoice; we are because they are. 

And we are because HE IS, right here with us.