Telling His Story

I begin this blogpost with an exerpt from John Eldredge's book, Scared Romance.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011
The Question Lodged Deep in Our Hearts
The question lodged deep in our hearts, hidden from our conscious minds, is: "Do you care for me, God?"

What's under that question?

Blaise Pascal, in his Penses, says, "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." What's under that question is our personal stories, often punctuated by the Message of the Arrows: parents who were emotionally absent; bedtimes without words or hugs; ears that were too big and noses that were too small; others chosen for playground games while we were not; and prayers about all these things seemingly met with silence. And embedded in our stories, deep down in our heart, in a place so well guarded that they have rarely if ever been exposed to the light of day, are other grief-laden and often angry questions: "God, why did you allow this to happen to me? Why did you make me like this? What will you allow to happen next?" In the secret places of our heart, we believe God is the One who did not protect us from these things or even the One who perpetrated them upon us. Our questions about him make us begin to live with a deep apprehension that clings anxiously to the depths of our hearts . . . "Do you really care for me, God?"

This is the question that has shipwrecked many of our hearts, leaving them grounded on reefs of pain and doubt, no longer free to accompany us on spiritual pilgrimage. We might be able to rationalize away that question by telling ourselves that we need to be more careful, or that sometimes others are just bad. We can even breathe a sigh of relief when we realize that trouble has come from our own sin. But even the careful, legalistic, and constricted lifestyle that arises out of thinking we can avoid trouble through our own devices shipwrecks when the Arrows seem to strike us out of nowhere. What are we to make of God's wildness in allowing these things to happen? (The Sacred Romance , 49-50)

Meet Pablo, pictured above with Yaneth. Pablo serves as the director of Spiritual Development for Children of the Nations here in the Dominican Republic. I stopped into see him yesterday to talk about reaching out to young men in the bateys with a message of hope for the fatherless. Unexpectedly, he told me his father story. He has a story that is "punctuated by the Message of teh Arrows", mentioned above, yet Christ has lifted him into freedom by his forgiveness and grace.

Did you see Passion of the Christ? Remember the difficult scene in which Christ is flogged and beaten on the way to the Cross. Pablo tells of beatings he received from his father that reminded me of that scene. He and his brother endured incredible abuse, emotionally, physically and spiritually with their father. The beauty of his story begins with receiving the love of Jesus Christ and the transformation of Pablo's heart and life. The question for him, "does God really care for me?", has been answered and now Pablo lives to tell others of this amazing love and grace. His relationship with his father is healing and he prays that one day his father will receive the love of Jesus.

Needless to say...God gave me an amazing day...the 4th of July...real freedom experienced by one of his children.