Unexpected Tears

Mid-way during my time in Kansas City, I went to see "Soul Surfer" which is a good, christian movie with some quality actors: Helen Hunt and Dennis Quaid. I am not so macho that I can't admit that I sometimes cry at movies, but in this particular case, I cried through a good deal of the movie, so much so that I was glad that it was 4 pm and there was only 2 other people in the theater.

The odd thing is that I have found myself crying a LOT since I began the sabbatical - reading books, listening to songs, in church, during dramas at conference last week, during other movies, but thankfully not during "Thor" last week, as that would have totally messed up the cool 3D effects. 

I've been trying to figure that out - the crying part. Last fall, I read Dan Allender's book "Sabbath" and he says that noise in our lives 

"masks a far greater cacophony that will seldom be heard until we choose silence. The problem is the underlying noise is louder than the masking sounds we use to cover what we don’t want to hear.” 

If we are silent, we are forced to deal with things, to being deeply disturbed. When we are quiet we can confront and hear the voice of  loss - dealing with grief that will surface when we are silent. A grief we fell too impoverished to invite in as a guest, so we send it away as an unwanted stranger. We have to turn up the volume on Loss/Grief, or it will keep calling us back and not allow joy.

Apparently when Dan Allendar went on his sabbatical, a friend asked him, “Are you ready for what will come?” True to form, he found himself awakening from deep sleep weeping, but was unaware why.

He says that "grief is like vomiting. It exhausts, nauseates, and relieves. Empties us, weakens us, but prepares us for food again." Or as Jesus puts it : "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Back to Soul Surfer: Why did it affect me so? This movie started out with them singing "Blessed Be Your Name" (Matt Redman) which we sing ALL the time in Mali. There is a reason we sing it a lot as it deals with praising God when things don't seem to be going the way we think they should be:

"You give and take away. . . . When the darkness closes in, still I will say. . Blessed Be Your Name". 

I think I decided that is why the movie resonated so much with me. The surfer girl had a lot of promise and then had that taken away inexplicably and then dealt with the loss.  The things that could have been were shattered, and then they were redeemed, remade into something better.

And that made sense set against the relief of so many things in Mali and Ivory Coast: senseless court cases, civil unrest, threats of terrorists, sickness and medevacs of key people. So much that might have been, that was thwarted for reasons I can not now see. So many cases also where we were forced to rely on God instead of our own capacities. And being quiet has allowed me to grieve those things.

In this time of Sabbatical and unexpected tears, God has given me this verse, which has been meaningful:

You keep track of my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8

An atheist friend of mine recently lead me to this verse:

 I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the Lord, do all these things. Isaiah 45:7 (The french says "prosperity and adversity")

God is sovereign even when adversity and disaster come our way. 

Last week's sermon by Harold Bullock was on Celebrating the Tapestry of Life. When looking at a tapestry, you can not see the pattern that is being woven from the back. It is not clear until it is done and you flip it over. You need those dark threads to provide contrast.  Harold closed with: "I can't see the pattern in the Tapestry, but i know the weaver."

Pray with me as I am about to head off to the lake for a month. This will be a time for silence. Pray that I can still my heart and sit silently.