“…and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue came up to God. And God heard their groaning and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the people of Israel– and God knew. -Exodus 2:23-25
God could have done so many things with Israel’s suffering. When the cries of agony came up to Him, He could have stood far off, turning His eyes and ears away, voluntarily ignorant of it all. He could have scoffed that sinners would even ask Him for help– that people who loved Him so little would ask Him to love them so much.
But instead, the Holy God does the unthinkable: He decides to be moved by it. He lets it affect Him, even though He knows the outcome will be a good one. Exodus makes this reality so abundantly clear that it is impossible to gloss over it: This sovereign God chose to be involved with the sufferings of His people. He chose to take center stage. He heard. He remembered. He saw. He knew. The most intimate knowledge, the deepest awareness of her plight, was found in Him.
…And it made Him act:
“I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that land to a land flowing with milk and honey.”
He was moved. He was affected. So, He acted. Intervened. Condescended. Came down to deliver them.
This passage sets the norm for all of Scripture– a holy God whose people’s heartaches become His own. Even when it’s their own fault! It culminates in the sufferings of Jesus, who was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” for, “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Jesus heard, saw, remembered the covenant, knew. He knew. So, He stepped down to deliver us forever from our slavery.
It’s easier for me, in the midst of suffering, to think thoughts like, “He is sovereign. He is good. He cares” than it is to think ones that suggest He, like any good friend or father, would be moved by my sorrows: “He grieves with me. He identifies with all of my sorrow and tasted the cup of suffering; now, He can sympathize and can intimately relate with my pain.” I think of everyone weeping with those who weep except God Himself!
I am sad.
I have been sad many days in Philadelphia for one reason or another. I am especially sad this week, recalling what I experienced this time last year. One year ago, I received a phone call that changed my life—a voice on the other line, eight days before my wedding, saying, “I just can’t do it, Carly. I can’t marry you.” I have not heard that voice since. Truth be told, I didn’t anticipate the one-year anniversary to be so difficult. But the past week has reminded me of many hurtful, terrible experiences. I was confronted today with the thought that I so often strive to dismiss: “Carly, you were FORSAKEN.” I didn’t dismiss it tonight; I embraced it with tears for the first time in many months. And it was a frightening place to be, embracing it meant a necessary grief would follow. And it did. And it made me feel all the more alone. All the more forsaken. All the more beyond consolation, eyes gazing upon the beautiful full moon, asking, “God?!” I was met with silence. I had no answers about how to handle this thing called pain.
I told myself I had to keep going, that I can’t keep living in this place. Time to “get over it.” Time to move on. Time to be okay, or at least pretend I am. That’s what I tell myself everyone is expecting, what God is expecting. It feels wrong to be sad. Wrong to be hurting. Sinful, even. “Come on, Carly. You need to get it together here. It’s been a year. Let it go. Move on. Get it together!”
And the most wonderful thing happened: I couldn’t. I just couldn’t make myself “unsad.” I couldn’t shove all the mourning, all the grieving back down into an already troubled soul. I couldn’t hide it. Deny it. Flee from it. I was real.
Tonight, almost one year later, I learned the beauty of a God who weeps with me. Yes, He is God come down to deliver. His affection leads Him to action. But when He revealed Himself to Israel through Moses, He didn’t start there. He didn’t start by saying, “I’m going to get you out of this. It’s pretty disgraceful.” He started somewhere else: letting their sorrows become His own, entering into their suffering, intimately acquainting Himself with their sadness. Before giving an agenda of what needs to change, He simply, tenderly, patiently loves them.
I know God wants to move me beyond the shame, suffering, and sin of last year. Sometimes, I know it too well. I just want to be done with this entire process. I want to be okay. I want God to do the delivering thing. But what I don’t know well is how He begins this process: Sympathy. Compassion. Sharing sufferings. Hearing. Seeing. Remembering. Knowing. He knows me. He knows all that is so wrong, yet to be made right. He knows the sadness. And He doesn’t say, “Get it together, Carly. Stop being so sad. It’s been a year, and this is just ridiculous. This is life. You’ve got to keep going.” He says, “I have come down.” He says He’s drawn near, chosen to be close. He says He’s been moved and affected and touched by what He has seen and heard.
To think that my sufferings touch the heart of God, that the aching of my soul has an effect on the holy, all-knowing One, is almost too much to believe– a “weight of glory”, as C.S. Lewis would say. “But so it is.”
One year later, I am still a stumbling saint, growing in fleeing faster and faster to the Jesus I’ve struggled to believe in– the One who is my friend, the One who embraces me, cares for me, weeps with me. Even if all others have forgotten what happened, He has not. Even if no one knows one year later, He does. He hasn’t tired of me, of my brokenness, even when I have. I am learning how to be loved, how to believe He loves me, and as I do, all things are seen clearly.
This trial has taught me how to have compassion on people slow to change, slow to heal, because I myself have become one of them. When this first happened, I subconsciously gave myself six months to get over it. That was a laugh. Turns out, at the six month point, I was at my worst. But God loved me, walked closely beside me, patiently. Love is patient. And I’m learning how to love like Him– how to be a long-suffering friend, how to lower expectations on myself and on others, how to model my Savior who draws near to and sticks it out with people in sorrow. I’m learning how to love slow-to-change strugglers now that I’ve been one.
One year later, I can still say this is all mercy. It is all for His name’s sake. I wouldn’t have chosen this route to learn all I have, but my story is His story, and it’s a beautiful one.
To my friends and family, thank you for sticking by me, for never telling me to simply “get over it”, for weeping with those who weep. For modeling the pattern of our God’s way of responding to our sufferings so I could see it tangibly and believe it.
If the LORD had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
When I thought, “My foot slips,”
your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up.
When the cares of my heart are many,
your consolations cheer my soul.
-Psalm 94:17-19
