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Life in a Post-Eden world often means there is no amount of preparation that can provide us with bulletproof protection from the penetrating sting of deep heartbreak. The reality of shalom shattered finds us in green rooms and board rooms and every room with a beating heart.
And here’s the hard truth:
Sometimes you don't know what you don't know when you find yourself on the doorstep of what Psalm 50 refers to as "the day of trouble."
Like when you’ve prayed and fasted for the perfect blueprint to apply to your God-dream only to encounter unthinkable setbacks. Or when you’ve spent weeks preparing the perfect approach for a difficult conversation only to be sidelined by triggering details and the residual emotional fallout.
There are moments we can’t willfully take the edge off of heart break in advance because relationships (and life) are neither predictable nor formulaic. Life is less math and more mystery. The day of trouble lands on each and every one of our calendars -- without notice.
And right here, in the mess and in the middle of pain we cannot escape, is where we are being formed into the likeness of Jesus.
And while Jesus was one with the Father and the Spirit -- all knowing, all present, and all powerful --Jesus still felt pain in real time. He still wept when faced with the grief of Lazarus’ death. Jesus, who had all power in Heaven and Earth to bypass grief and to change any and all outcomes traveled through sorrow and not around it. And He did this all the way to the cross…all the way to the Kingdom come.
As for us, there is a heart sickness that can set in on the day of trouble and I want to offer three truths to grasp in moments when we come face to face with the reality of shalom shattered:
1. The day of trouble is an opportunity to approach God in unsanitized confession, to name the raw, unprocessed emotion in all of its complexity before Him in prayer.
2. The day of trouble is revelatory. Pain reveals. We often need safe containment in this space of new revelation. We must have our wounds, our confusion, and our mess mirrored back to us accurately and compassionately through safe community.
3. The day of trouble is formational. There are some aspects of our sin nature, some blind spots, some unconscious places where pride and control still lurk, that can only be burned out of us through the heart of wilderness trouble. This is a space in which hope is deferred and the heart sickness leads us away from faith in outcome and straight into encounter with a God who sees and remembers -- a God who is close to the broken-hearted and the crushed in spirit.
Jesus is the full embodiment of hope on the day of trouble when shalom shatters in a billion pieces and these are the words He offers to us:
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33
On the day of trouble, who will you call upon? In the absence of answers and in the absence of understanding, God offers Himself to you through the comfort of His Holy Spirit and through the listening hearts of His people. We are here to help if you find yourself navigating this space.
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