Take this cup away

In January, at the CMS Summer school, I heard author Naomi Reed speak about her time in Nepal. She described one particular day of crisis, when the king was attempting to regain control in Nepal, and communications and electricity were cut off. Her husband was away, and she was left looking after the children, in a difficult and frightening situation. The feeling was one of dread, and she had a moment of wondering whether God really understood that emotion. Then she was reminded of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, and the anguish and dread that he experienced as he saw what was about to happen. It reminded her that God understood suffering from the inside.

That feeling of dread is perhaps part of what you'd experience waiting for a major cyclone to approach - the sense of inevitability and powerlessness. It was also a word that Jen particularly used herself when in the middle of chemo. As the chemo cycles went on, and the side effects worsened - nausea, exhaustion, constipation, neuropathy, and pain - Jen dreaded more and more the next time in the chemo day unit, even the usual struggle for the nurses to find a vein to use.

There came a day in March of 2009, about five months into chemo, when she was feeling so bad she said to me "I don't know if I can do this anymore". Initially I was shocked: the chemo was actually working, according to scans, and it was all that seemed to stand between Jen and death. Yet the personal price was very high, and it raised the difficult question of who Jen was doing it all for: was she taking treatment so she'd have more time to enjoy, or was it so that the boys and I could see her for longer, even if it reduced the quality of her life? From afar, at the start of treatment, Jen was committed to doing what she could to give the boys as much time with her as possible. But as I wrote in the blog entry "Unicorn blood", up close the choice is never as simple as that.

So I thought then of Jesus in the garden, experiencing that dread as he faces death by execution. He prays "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done". He could have found an easier way out, but he took the difficult path for the sake of others. I don't think there was any easy path for Jen, She wanted the cup to be taken away, but she gathered her courage to face another cycle of chemo, to perhaps buy us more time together. I don't know how much difference the extra chemo cycles made, but at the time you never know.

As I'm again wrestling with the issue of where suffering fits in God's plans, I am frequently repulsed by the idea of a God who makes us suffer for some potential higher purpose. The only thought I find helpful is that God in Jesus does suffer and needs to suffer - which is an indication of how desperate the situation is. I am reassured that somehow God understands and feels suffering. As Bonhoffer said, "Only the suffering God can help". In "Lament for a Son", Wolterstorff writes

God is love. That is why he suffers. To love our sinful suffering world is to suffer. God so suffered for this world that he gave up his only Son to suffering. The one who does not see God's suffering does not see his love. God is suffering love.

So suffering is down at the center of things, deep down where the meaning is. Suffering is the meaning of our world. For Love is the meaning. And Love suffers. The tears of God are the meaning of history.