A broken tulip

This meditation on betrayal and forgiveness is broken up between blog posts. You can read the introduction here.

Linger with me here, with two lines of poetry from the prophets – they follow one after the other, blowing our minds in stunning contrast:  

 “the unassailable fortifications of your walls

He will bring down,

lay low

and cast to the ground,

even to the dust.”

“In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah,

‘We have a strong city;

He sets up walls and ramparts for security.

Open the gates, that the righteous nation may enter,

the one that remains faithful.

The steadfast of mind you will keep in perfect peace,

because he trusts in you.”

What a contrast. Between a cast down city and a strong city; between an unassailable fortification and an open gate.

I’ll speak for myself: so often I cope with pain by turning myself into an unassailable city, sealed off.  The end is clear from the beginning. The unassailable city is torn to pieces, emptiness revealed. Oh yes, there were good reasons to build these walls. But fear is never God’s call for his children. 

But this second scenario; instead of walls broken in dust, he promises peace. He builds my walls. It is a strong city. It is secure. Only the faithful may enter! And I have perfect peace, my mind stayed on him.

But.

Does this bother you, as it does me? When trust is shattered, the battlefield shifts. God does not see the same battle I do.

I see the person who has broken my trust and declare them the enemy. This is how darkness works: it takes your own heart hostage in the promise of protection.

Satan doesn’t do things without promising some reward. He promises safety. But his method of protection is to destroy and to make me a partner in that destruction. I destroy others (the “threats” to my security) and I destroy myself, my God-given abilities and desires to relate, connect, love, and rejoice. Fear is never God’s choice for his children.

God protects because he is the all-powerful God. His protection is ever and only creative and generative just as Satan’s protection is always destructive.

His protection sees your true enemy and requires that you draw near to the very people you’re afraid of. His protection renews you inwardly instead of destroying– rebuilds your love, trust, confidence, and peace. The path to this renewal is painful but

in him the pain begets life

just as in darkness, the pain begets death.

So when anger and hurt flare up, whose hands do you surrender it to? The whole, clean, “safe” hands of darkness? Or the pierced, scarred, “dangerous” hands of Love?

“And give us our inheritance of divine love so that we can forgive like you. And let us be wise, so that we do not wed another’s madness and then make them in debt to us for the deep gash their helpless raging lance will cause.” (St. Francis of Assisi)

Darkness will snatch up your pain and instantly invest it – to stoke a fire of anger, to build a new brick into one of your many walls. The pain will stay in your own heart.

It will always be yours.

Love’s hands stay open. The pain is offered up in thanks to God. Love blesses you, too, as a daughter, as a son, made in the image of a God whose heart daily breaks for those he loves, a God who never sealed himself off, a God who never once built a wall, a God who pursues his adulterous wife and is shamed and killed in her place. In his hands, pain transfigures. It takes on a new glow, a new colour. It feeds others. It feeds your enemies.

It will never be yours again.

In Love’s hands, pain becomes understanding, bought dearly and therefore precious.

This is the understanding:

the price of a heart;

that the price of every beating human heart is immeasurably higher than any pain I feel.

In His hands, I understand that I am broken and pierced for the sake of the world… because the pain is nothing compared to the joy of seeing a life reclaimed, renewed, rebuilt.

But the understanding grows. It goes beyond even that.

Image: Woonsook Kim, painting of Till We Have Faces (a beautiful and haunting retelling of Cupid and Psyche’s myth)