Beautiful Disaster By: Sarah

When I consider the life and death of Christ I have often tried to place myself in the shoes of those surrounding him.  If I had grown up next to him, would I have joined the crowd that threw him out of Nazareth when he announced his divinity?  Would I have followed, that very moment, if I were hard at work in the Sea of Galilee when Jesus called, “Come, follow me.”  

Would I have slept at the gates of Gethsemane as he bled from every pore?  

Christ at Gethsemane By Carl Heinrich Bloch

And when he was taken and crucified would I have believed that all he did was for naught?  Would I have thought that all was lost? 

I can only imagine the prayers of Mary the Mother of Christ.  I can only guess what Mary Magdalene’s heart spoke to God.  

The Pieta' By Michelangelo

I can only speculate at the pleading desires of the apostles, who loved their master deeply, when they saw Him, bloodied and beaten, carrying that cross up to Calvary.  

CHRIST ON THE ROAD TO CALVARY - GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO

They must have begged for divine intervention.  They must have wondered if God had forgotten them.  They must have said, “This cannot be.  This cannot happen.”  And yet it did.  Why must have engulfed their minds day and night.

After Miles passed away I spent months in a fog, wondering why.  I had moments of clarity, when the depression would lift and I could feel the spirit speak to me and in one of these moments of clarity I wrote this:

It is as we rise from the most difficult and heartbreaking trials that we finally see, actually experience, that the Lord can make more out of us than we could ever make of ourselves.  If left to ourselves we would always avoid the deep valleys and briars and thorns.  We would never choose the heartbreak and the feelings of intense loss, so the Lord chooses them for us.  And as we fall we question, “Why this?”  “Why now?”  “Why me?” While the Lord keeps quietly, lovingly chanting, “Trust me.  Trust me.  Trust me.  This will be beautiful.”  And as you rise from the ashes of the fire you think, “I never knew I could FEEL like this.  I never knew I could love so deeply.  I never knew, Lord.”  And you are changed.  Eternally.  Not necessarily for the ‘happier’ but for the holier.  Which was the goal all along.

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone.  The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes.  To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” –Cynthia Occelli

 

If the seed didn’t break open and destroy itself, it would never be anything but a seed.  But we weren’t made to only hold potential.  We were made to break open, grow, and become. 

God doesn’t hold us in his hands, commenting on what pretty seeds we are.  He nourishes us with love, blessings, and yes, adversity, and trials.

The fact of the matter remains:

Christ had to suffer to atone.  He had to die to be resurrected.  If the Greatest of All condescended to this, can we not expect a portion of the same for our own mortal existence? 

And if His vast suffering created mercy and His brutal death produced eternal life, then how can we not expect the product of our suffering to not have some portion of radiance, especially if we are His?

Perhaps, like those surrounding Christ during His mortal life, we are not in the middle of a disaster, but instead are witnessing ourselves being saved.