Scontare!!!

For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father

When I was a Little girl I used to "lull" myself to sleep by weeping. I would think of all of the people I knew with infirmities... Johnny Hastings who was so crippled from MS, he was wheelchair bound, yet he managed to pull himself up to stand (hanging on to the pew in front of him) and sing every blessed hymn our church sang on Sunday morning.  I would think of the little boy in Sunday school who had a stump instead of a forearm and hand...  I would beg, I mean BEG God to give me all of the hurt these people (and animals!) felt... to take it away from them and give it all to me.

Over the years the amount of suffering I would see was almost debilitating for me. I remember the guilt I felt when we left the streets of Yemen to return to the States. Wee children, freezing cold, no shoes, no coats, carrying loads bigger than they were trying to sell whatever it was they had that day.  I witnessed there deformities of the human body that I didn't know were physically possible. I felt guilty because watching their suffering was too much for me, I couldn't wait to get away from it. Lord, I'm so sorry... how will I ever come here to teach them about You when I can't stand to look at them for more than a couple of weeks?

THEN I watched my Dad go through what he did, it was truly my worst fears realized. I can't imagine suffering made more real. I was such a mess over it that my sister and brother asked me to leave the house for a while... My Dad. Frequently, throughout Dad's stay in the hospital I would hear him say "Scahta!! Scahta!!" What he was saying was his Southern Italian version of the Italian word "Scontare" meaning to suffer for one's sins. Usually it is used as a sword of sorts. When someone who is not a very nice person, or has done something not very nice, no help or mercy or grace is shown when they are hurting. Rather they look at the person and say "Scahta!!" Dad was telling himself to suffer for his sins. Even though Christ had suffered and died for those sins so long ago.

Truly, none of us has suffered as Christ. This does not negate the fact that, literally everywhere I look, my brothers and sisters, and the ones who do not even have the hope of Jesus, are suffering. 

I look at the family from church who lost their son....leaving their beautiful grandchildren fatherless. The family from church who lost their beautiful eight and a half month baby niece. How does one "move on" from these things? The thousands that lost their lives in Haiti. Those who are left behind still suffering.  The young mother in Kenya who upon finding out that she was HIV positive, begged my friend to take her baby boy so he could have a fighting chance in life.

Somewhere along the line, maybe early in my teens, I realized that the Lord would not give me these infirmities, and shield others from them... they are a part of life. A life that has been cursed by sin... all of which the Lord Jesus Himself had already bore upon Calvary's Tree. I then begged the Lord to shield me from watching it...the suffering. Obviously this is not what He had in mind for me either. 

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward... He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?...Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...

One day the Lord Jesus Himself will wipe away all of my tears with His nail pierced hands. I pray that until that time, He would use my hands to wipe away the tears of those burdened with this life cursed by sin. I pray that I would reveal His love for them in tangible ways. I pray that I would not try and protect myself by turning away and pretending it isn't going on all around me. The Lord obviously... so very obviously wants me to see the suffering... He wants me to go further and be there as His hands, His feet... He who said "Not My will but Thine" when it was time for Him to suffer death on the Cross.

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.