Overwhelmed

Feeling overwhelmed

    Jeremiah’s emotional observation of Jerusalem after it had fallen to the Babylonians: “How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!” (Lamentations 1:1). My mind instantly lights up with vivid news images of the empty American streets as we attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

    The only word I can think of to describe this time that we’re living in is “overwhelming.” The changes have some so quickly, so suddenly, and struck so deeply at every aspect of our lives. We don’t have time to process one change before another one comes along. Like being hit by an enormous wave before we’ve recovered from the effects of the last one. And we don’t know what the future holds once the worst of the pandemic passes. How many of those treacherous waves are roaring toward us in the unseen future?

    (The root of the word “overwhelm” is “over the helm.” The helm is the ship’s center of control, so “overwhelm” is a word picture of a massive wave striking in a way that endangers the very control of the ship. Feeling overwhelmed is like that.)

    I sit down to pray and I don’t know where to begin. I’m overwhelmed by the enormity of the needs and the pain. Lost jobs. Thousands of deaths. Hospitals filled and overfilled with critically ill patients. Shortages of medical equipment and protective gear. The increased risk of violence for vulnerable women and children who are now isolated at home with their abusers. Recovering addicts and those suffering from mental health issues cut off from their sources of support. Prisoners and many seniors unable to leave their close quarters where the virus can quickly spread. Sales of both alcohol and firearms skyrocketing. It’s overwhelming.

Grieving losses

    “How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!” The barren streets of Jerusalem symbolized the loss of Israel’s most precious community. Not just the location of many of their homes, but of God’s temple. The holiest place in the world. The place where the Lord would meet with His people, accept their sacrifices, forgive their sins. Where they would celebrate with joy in remembrance of all that He had done for them in the past. Where they would find hope for their future.

    Just as our desolate streets symbolize our losses. Our loss of income and prosperity. Our loss of social interaction. Our loss of direction. Even emptiness can be overwhelming.

    After Jerusalem was destroyed, the people were carried off to Babylon in captivity. Thus the vacant streets. They mourned and wailed as they went, and continued after they arrived. “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion [Jerusalem]” (Psalm 137:1). The book of Lamentations is Jeremiah’s expression of his overwhelming grief for himself and his people.

    We need to grieve as he did. We need to lament our losses, not just as individuals concerned about self, but as members of our families and of our local and national communities. We need to weep over our deserted streets.

Finding hope

    But with all its heavy heartbreak, Lamentations also contains the verses that inspired the comforting hymn, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” Who would have thought that one of the most depressing books in the Bible would voice some of the most encouraging words of hope?

    “I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (3:19-23). Jeremiah uses the present tense to describe his remembering and his downcast soul. The bitterness and the gall don’t end when he calls to mind his reason for hope.

    In the same way, even though our streets are empty, even though we continually remember the afflictions, even though our souls remain downcast, we can call to mind our reason for hope. We can adjust our perspective to see, as Jeremiah did, that it is because of God’s great love for us that we are not completely consumed. That our Lord’s compassions never fail. That they are new every morning. That His faithfulness is great.

    It reminds me of Habakkuk 3:7-8: “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

    I could understand Habakkuk saying, “Though all these things are happening, yet my faith will not be shaken,” or, “yet I will maintain my hope in the future.” But “I will rejoice in the Lord”? “I will be joyful in God my Savior”? That’s so much harder. So much more unrealistic.

    And yet there it is. Joy in a time of destitution. Rejoicing even though his entire world has fallen apart.

    This is the hope that we have in Jesus. Hope that we can grow into that maturity that has learned how to rejoice in the Lord (not in the circumstances), how to be joyful in God my Savior (not in other people).

    Sometimes I have that joy. Even in these days of feeling overwhelmed by the uncertainty of it all. Sometimes I can experience the reality that the joy of the Lord is my strength (Nehemiah 8:10, written soon after the exiles had returned to their desolate land).

    But at other times I rest in the comfort of knowing that Jesus, “for the joy set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). Sometimes the best I can do is endure, knowing that the joy is still before me, that it will come at some future point. And that’s okay, too.

    As an American, I seem to believe that at any given moment I’m either happy or sad, life is either good or bad. That’s how we tend to view the world. But the reality, demonstrated over and over again in the Bible, is that life isn’t always that simple. Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Nehemiah all got this. They all mourned, they all wept, they all struggled to understand how the Lord could allow the suffering that they witnessed and experienced. And yet they expressed their faith in a loving God and their joy in their Savior, even in the full awareness of the pain of their circumstances and the grief in their souls.

Jesus Was Heard

God hears my prayers

    “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” (Hebrews 5:7). Jesus, God the Son, poured out His heart to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, begging to be spared the torture of bearing our sins on the cross. Not just once, but three times (Matthew 26:36-44). And He was heard by the one who could save Him from death.

    Doesn’t that imply that He was saved from that death? Anytime someone tells me that God heard their prayer, they always mean that He did what they asked Him to do.

    “My son was suffering from a life-threatening illness, but God heard my prayer and healed him.”

    “I didn’t know how I was going to pay my rent, but God heard my prayer and provided the money that I needed.”

    “I really wanted that job that I applied for. God heard my prayer. I got the offer yesterday.”

    Have you ever heard anyone say, “I prayed for God to save my friend’s life. He heard my prayer and said no”? I haven’t.

    That’s why I need this passage from Hebrews. “The one who could save him from death” heard Jesus and denied His request. If God could be so intent on doing what’s absolutely best and right even in the face of desperate pleas from His own Son, maybe I can trust Him to hear me and love me and hurt for me—and still do what’s best and right in every situation. Even when the answer is no.

    God has turned down so many of my appeals for help and healing in the last several years. It can be discouraging. I find myself waiting for the next shoe to drop, hesitating before asking for His intervention, expecting Him to deny every request. That’s my natural response.

    But reading that Jesus was heard restores my weary soul. Sometimes just being heard is a great blessing in itself. Sometimes having someone who listens ministers to me more than having someone who fixes all my problems. Being heard, even without receiving any answers, brings its own strength.

    Jesus was heard. I will be heard. That can be enough.

Even when I fail

    Then I move on to the next statement in the Hebrews passage, “because of his reverent submission.” Uh-oh. Does that mean that I have to be just as reverentially submissive as Jesus was, or God won’t listen to me? That could rule out a lot of answers to my prayers.

    I do my best to accept that He knows better than I do and that He loves me even more than I can imagine. But it will never be possible for me to exhibit the same reverent submission that Jesus displayed. Does that mean that God will close His ears to me? I’ve always had this fear, partly based on this verse, that if I don’t pray just right, God won’t listen to me.

    But now it hits me. Anytime I’m facing the impossible, I have to rely on His grace alone. Jesus had to be perfect in all that He did, including the way He dealt with His coming death, in order to provide an acceptable sacrifice for our sins. Anything less, and there would have been no resurrection. The privilege of bringing my needs to God is based on Jesus’ perfection, His reverent submission, not mine. Even when I’m at my worst, in His grace God will hear me.

And provides the best answers

    It doesn’t seem as obvious to me, but God also answered Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer on Easter Sunday. The gist of His request was that the Father would do whatever needed to be done to provide for our salvation. That’s exactly what He did. It involved an agonizing sacrifice on Jesus’ part, which He had asked to be spared from. But the ultimate result was exactly what Jesus wanted most. The resurrection proved that His sacrifice was exactly what was necessary to accomplish God’s purpose.

    With the toughest prayers that I send up to heaven, I’m usually aware of needing to ask for God’s will, not mine, to be done. (I don’t always remember to attach that thought to my simpler prayers.) But when He says no to my specific request, do I see the less obvious—that He has said yes to a greater good, the good of doing His will to accomplish His purposes?

    I don’t want to sugarcoat the pain here. I don’t want to tell a child that his father died because God needed him in heaven or because life on earth really is better without him, as I’ve heard some Christians say. That’s not the God of the Bible.

    As I try to wrap my mind around the issue of good and evil and suffering, my best understanding is that it was incredibly precious to God to create beings who could freely choose to worship Him or to deny Him. He knew the only way to do that would be to open the door to evil. But He also knew that the good to be accomplished would be far greater than all the evil Satan could muster.

    When bad times come into our lives, God doesn’t just sit up in heaven watching lazily, saying, “No big deal. I’ll make something good happen to balance it out.” No. He feels the grief at least as much as I do. And the anger. He is not indifferent to evil and hardship.

    But He overcomes that evil with good. For every pain and every sorrow, God offers Himself to His children, as Jesus offered Himself on the cross. He comes to us with tenderness and mercy, with kindness and love. He binds up our wounds and cradles us in His everlasting arms. This is the good that comes from, and far outweighs, the suffering.

    In the process, He restores and transforms our lives, as He restored and transformed His Son’s life on that first Easter Sunday. Because we live in a fallen world, a greater good is accomplished as a result of affliction than we could ever experience without it. If we’re praying, as Jesus did, “Not my will but yours,” that prayer will be answered abundantly more than all we could ask or think. The pain will be real. We will fall on our faces and cry out in agony, as Jesus did. But in God’s timing we will be lifted even higher as a result of the ordeal, just as Jesus was.