Due to two recent events I have had the opportunity to spend time with family and friends. The first event was a birthday party my wife gave me, the second was last weekend when we hosted a birthday party for my mother's 90th birthday.
At both events I had some bits of time to talk with folk who I sometimes don't see often. Some I really didn't have the opportunity to speak with but I know enough of their story to know some of the twists and turns of their lives.
I have a friend who has struggled with dependency issues and is now having to walk through a divorce initiated by his wife.
A friend just suffered the loss of a sister and is in the throes of grief.
A family member shared with me the hurt of losing a job. It was a short-lived job after a very protracted and humbling unemployment. She is smart, conversant, was at one time successful in the pharmaceutical business but has been unemployed now for years. Unfortunately, this is a common story.
Another person at one of these events struggles deeply with forgiveness, forgiveness for others and forgiveness for themselves. Sometimes this struggle causes them to do and say things that are regretful and only add to their ongoing struggle.
I had a conversation with one person I once was close to. I longed for more depth but sensed the closed door to anything deeper than the surface issues.
I too have had my own struggles with old things surfacing causing me to wonder if healing ever will come.
Ashes. I am writing about ashes. They come into all our lives. Some are the remains of things completely out of our control, death of a loved one causes us to sit in the ashes of grief. In other events we are trapped in the outcomes of others who we have interacted with, our interactions cause problems and relationships are strained or broken. Some ashes come simply because we have chosen poorly and the outcome is a dry and barren place of ash.
I've experienced all of these. I see, all too often, answers to these things, these places of ash, reduced to snappy little religious cliches. We love to latch on to them in hope they will be the quick pill of deliverance. We don't want to spend time in the ashes. We don't like to see others there as well so we are quick to offer up the bits and pieces of these cliches, or the bits and pieces of scripture that come to mind. For a time this approach works but I've noticed in those seeking something deeper with Abba the efficacy of these short quips taking a tumble downward. It leaves us wondering what happened, where is God, why does this not work any more?
Some, at this point, shut down, dig deeper into the cliches and hold on tighter thinking they must not have enough faith or that some sin is blocking the pathway. Others walk away and abandon the beginnings of vital faith, vital relationship. They may continue to hold on to the shell of religion but deep down they just have stopped showing up. Others don't even pretend anymore, they simply abandon the faith they once had.
Few will sit in the ashes. We believe there is something wrong with this approach, surely God wants us to be happy and out of this as quickly as possible. Perhaps He wants to take us deeper into Him, into understanding how dependent we are upon Jesus.
I could write something about every situation I've mentioned above and I might not be "off mark" but after examining my own times in the ash heap, I know the only thing truly effective was simply Jesus. No pithy scriptural quotes or religious cliches would do. I discovered He was there with me, even if the ash heap was of my own making. He said at the end, "Lo I am with you always" and offered the words with no caveat, no depending clause to His presence. It is grace that He is there when the ash heap swirls around us. His grace is enough but we would never know this if we rush away from the pain and confusion. Finding Him at those times is startling, disruptive and almost always full of weighty matters for us to learn from, lessons that can only be found in those ashes. We will rise, but let it be in His time, not ours.
