When God Weeps by Joni Eareckson Tada

Author:Joni Eareckson Tada [Tada, Joni Eareckson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2010-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

Here, O Christ, our sins we see,

Learn Thy love while gazing thus;

Sin, which laid the cross on Thee,

Love, which bore the cross for us.

Here we learn to serve and give,

And, rejoicing, self deny;

Here we gather love to live;

Here we gather faith to die.

Pressing onward as we can,

Still to this our hearts must tend;

Where our earliest hopes began,

There our last aspirings end.

Till amid the hosts of light,

We in Thee redeemed, complete,

Through Thy cross made pure and white,

Cast our crowns before Thy feet.

Elizabeth Rundle Charles (1828-1896)2

Resurrection power is found at the cross, the place where we die to fierce unrest and low ambition. Resurrection power is cleansing power. Purifying power. It’s the ability to sweep clean every skeleton in your closet and shake loose every monkey off your back. Strength to break the ball and chain around your soul and swing wide the prison door to the fresh air of freedom. Power to say no to doubts and fears and power to say yes to God’s enabling. It’s what 2 Timothy 2:11-12 is all about: “If we die with him, we shall also live with him; if we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him.”

Maybe this answers that ancient longing I spoke of earlier. The yearning that echoes the message that we were made for him. If we strike the tuning fork of God’s perfect pitch, we will hear…perfection. Perhaps our desire to know him and the power of his resurrection is really an intense desire for holiness.

To be all that he created us to be.

COME TO THE CROSS AND FIND YOURSELF

Shawna Leavell could be a model in Paris, gliding down the runways at the finest fashion shows. Tall, lithe, with a blonde mane that breezes behind her as her long legs stride. When she was little, we’d camp up in the Sierras. I’d sit at the bottom of a cliff and enjoy vicarious rock climbing through her. Or trout fishing. “What a helpful kid,” I’d say to her mother as Shawna toasted me marshmallows or pushed me along the road of Coldwater Campground. Years later, art school and wardrobe work in the movie industry pushed her into a different life. An unsafe life.

Living alone in downtown Los Angeles, she walked the edge of darkness and depression. On a lonely Friday night, after a couple of glasses of gin, she stumbled out of the house, clouded and numb. In a fog, she climbed into her car, drove down the street and got on the Hollywood freeway. Up the exit. Shawna was speeding north straight into southbound traffic. Oncoming cars veered, flashing their high beams and honking. She doesn’t remember the head-on collision. She doesn’t recall the police cars, helicopters and bullhorns, and evening news reports on the television. One man dead. Another seriously injured. A wife left without a husband and three children without their father.

Days later, a policeman was still posted outside of Shawna’s hospital room where she lay bruised in a body cast. When I wheeled up to her bedside, she moaned through swollen lips.

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