Dear suffering one

Dear suffering one,

Oh, the privilege that God has lavished upon you to enter into His heart.
  

To feel deeply of His pain, to share more wholly in His distress – the breakdown of His creation – to understand part of the depth of God – to know a side of Him that many do not wish or allow themselves to experience.

Remember those times you called out to God that you would know Him more, know Him deeper? 
Will you recognize Him in this storm – His heart that breaks too and His heart that loves so much that is it bleeding more than yours? 
Will you allow yourself to dwell with Him in this and to be, to be patiently with Him? 
Will you allow His earth-shattering grief and pain to linger in your heart, until it mingles with yours? Until a union occurs and you know another side of Him? 

Not that God needs your comfort, nor your pity, but that He trusts you, His son, His daughter, to see that His love is vulnerable too – there are no guarantees that it will be returned to Him. (And nor does He demand it.)

And in His pain, He does not cease to love, because He is love and He will continue to offer out His hand, vulnerable, and ask you to take it. 

Yourself.
 

And then to others.

 Vulnerable love.  Love that costs. 


'I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings' 
- Philippians 3:10