There are times when the Lord’s ways become difficult to recognize. What seemed certain grows obscure. Prayer continues, yet the circumstances remain. The heart waits before a silence it cannot explain.
Perhaps the deepest sorrow is the distance between the Christ who was expected and the Christ whose ways remain hidden.
There is something here that calls for tenderness. Tears and questions belong within this mystery. Even the cry that cannot understand may still be turned toward Him.
The outer man feels the loss of familiar assurances. It reaches for an explanation, something to show that love is still love. Yet the eternal fellowship of the Father and the Son lies deeper than anything circumstances can reveal.
Before the world began, this love was.
Before the world’s foundation, the suffering of the Lamb was already held within the eternal purpose of God. What appeared at Calvary in time belonged to a love that preceded time. The Son’s surrender was no hurried answer to human failure. The mystery of the cross reaches back into that eternal communion, where love had already purposed to give itself completely.
Before there was a need to understand, the Son was in the Father, and the Father in the Son. That fellowship remains the hidden reality of abiding. Christ Himself is the life within it, the prayer within it, the love that continues when every other light seems to have gone out.
Perhaps some darkness is the inability to comprehend a light beyond the reach of familiar understanding. The mind has come to the end of what it can explain. The spirit remains open to a communion whose depths cannot be measured.
There is no need to make this into a great spiritual achievement. The longing to surrender can itself become occupied with how completely it has surrendered. Even that occupation may grow quiet.
Christ remains.
The cross reaches the insistence that His love must take a certain form, that His presence must be accompanied by a certain feeling, that fellowship must be confirmed by a particular outcome. As that insistence loosens, there is room for the Son’s relationship with the Father to become the inward reality.
This is the breaking that serves life: the outer man yielding its claim to govern what only Christ can live.
The pain may still be felt. The question may remain unanswered. There may be no words worthy of the hour. Yet Christ’s communion with the Father continues within the silence.
Perhaps this is something of the blessing of remaining unoffended: the quiet surrender of the demand that Christ explain Himself before He can be loved.
Such words must remain humble. No one can measure another’s sorrow or determine the meaning of another’s night.
The treasure is Christ Himself.
Zoe has its source beyond the changing conditions of this world. Its life cannot be secured by understanding, and suffering cannot earn it. The Son abides in the Father, and His own abiding becomes the life within the brokenness.
What a deep and hidden calling this is.
Even here, where much is lost and little is understood, the eternal fellowship remains. The heart may be quiet before it. The spirit may dwell within it.
Beyond explanation, beyond the need to possess an answer, there is the Son, eternally in the Father.
The one thing, brother.
Christ Himself, the mystery within the silence.
