The deep rays surrounded her, burning deep into her skin. Her tears were flame, paths of umber scoring her cheeks. She screamed at the sea below, at the calm waves whispering against the rocks. Her hands trembled on the railing, knuckles white and stiff against the gray wood.
Where was the peace promised? Where were the crashing waves swallowing the cliffs? Where was the roar of raging wildfire on the horizon? A silent disc floated on a raft of molten gold, bathing in her pain. The roar inside her soul grew, tinting the gently waving leaves with its inferno. Her eyes ignited in the sun, searing the tears from her mind.
The memory of his hand was a phantom on her shoulder and she whirled to empty air. Flame faded, leaving black emptiness. Charred and crumbled, she lay staring into the fading glow of stone that cooled but never turned to ash.
The dried up, decomposing vines brushed her skin, tendrils of the darkness that protected what was left of her soul and crushed the breath from her lungs all at once. The candles in front of her flickered, pitiful against even the promise of wind in a trembling leaf at the edge of vision. Only three. How had three broken candles been all she had to offer for a shattered life?
Hot wax rearranged itself drop by drop into the shape of glass cups, insulation to prevent fire. As if she wasn’t already burning, endlessly unconsumed but raw. As if it had been her skin stolen from her instead of… instead. How many days since she had been able to breathe? A week? Two?
Orange globes peeking from a sea of green. Teeming life. Life on the edge of death; the smell of rot was more appropriate. Death for death. Orange flickered with the flame, mocking, demanding. Only three candles.
People did light candles for death, didn’t they? The trembling leaf released its hold, a moth fluttering to burn, disintegrated, forgotten. No. Never that. How can a chasm be forgotten? There should be stars. If there weren’t enough candles there should at least be stars. Where were the stars? Grieving. Maybe they would die, too; that would be fitting. Stars dying for loss of her Star.
Goosebumps rose under her fingers. Vines whispered. Flames guttered and fell. Only three broken candles.
Color surrounded her, the brilliant yellows and reds and greens of summer in the garden. The sky glared blue overhead, and she glared back at its near cloudless face. Her hand closed around the nearest white spray, twisting involuntarily, the crushed petals releasing their nauseatingly sweet scent as they fell from her fingers.
She took a shuddering breath, her chest aching as if with vacuum. The fountain nearby was as dry as her eyes; she resented it’s deathly emptiness. Perhaps the red that surrounded it was the remains of the bloody tears of its untimely end, an irrevocable stain on the land. She pressed her fists into her eyes until they ached, silently screaming for a single drop of relief.
A hand touched her shoulder and she flinched. “It’s going to be alright,” someone said, and the hand caressed the black of her sleeve like flame licking at tempered steel. Her arms fell nerveless to her sides and she walked away without a word.
I recently watched a TV show I enjoy in which one young character, upon finding out something she would have to do, exclaimed “oh, my God!” An older character rebuked her, told her not to take God’s name in vain. The young girl responded with great fervor that she hoped it wasn’t in vain, she was going to need all the help she could get.
That little scene stopped me in my tracks. All my life I was taught that using that particular phrase was taking God’s name in vain. All my life I was taught that any phrase using God’s name in conversation was treating it flippantly. As a result, reference to God was reduced to carefully organized and controlled settings. This restriction had the logical effect of limiting my understanding of God’s role in my life and limiting His effect on my heart. God was an intellectual concept I believed in, a set of laws to follow, nothing more.
“Lord my God, you are very great.” “My God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to life my face toward you.” “My God, we know you!” “Lord my God, I seek refuge in you.” “Pay attention to the sound of my cry, my Lord and my God.” “My God illuminates my darkness.” “Vindicate me, Lord my God.” “Deliver me, my God.” “Then you raised my life from the pit, Lord my God!” “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
In our quest to avoid treating His name flippantly, we sometimes forget that we are indeed commanded to call upon His name. When we are in trouble, we call on Him for aid. When we have hurt Him, we cry His name in shame. When we come through the tough times we call on Him in thanks. Throughout scripture the faithful called His name in fear, pain, shame, joy, wonder, and gratitude. “My God” fills the pages of the inspired Word, and was wrenched from the throat of the sacrificial God Himself as He hung on the cross.
When I’m nervous about a test or an interview, oh, my God, be with me. When I am frightened by a bully, oh, my God, give me courage. When unfair words wound my heart and make me angry, oh, my God, give me humility and kindness. When money comes to pay a difficult bill, oh, my God, thank you! When a friend holds me close in a moment of grief, oh, my God, you have comforted me. When I read Your Word, oh, my God, how I love you. How amazing it is to have a God who is with me in every moment of my life! Oh, my God!
“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is”
“not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people”
“not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing”
“not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing”
This passage may be one of the most memorized in scripture, at least among people I grew up listening to. It is whipped out like a hammer after a loose nail every time someone isn’t seen at the church building on a Sunday or Wednesday. “Don’t forsake the assembly!” is our usual misquote, with a capital A.
As the people of the Roman empire absorbed the implications of the death and resurrection of Jesus, they experienced a change so great within themselves that they could not identify with the lives they had previously led. They had been empty and became full. They had been meaningless and suddenly had a great purpose. They craved contact with those who shared the unfathomable joy of that revolution, and so they spent every possible moment in each other’s company.
Most of them worked long hours for a meager existence, and many had little to call their own, but what that had they shared. They spent the evening meal in each other’s homes, no matter how plain or poor the surroundings or the food. They socialized with each other on market days in the town square. They gathered informally in public forums or synagogues to read the scrolls available to them and help each other discover the identity of faith.
These transformed people were not a corporation with designated hours to assemble for work. They were a family, and they fed each other’s faith through their shared joy and unrelenting enthusiasm. Unfortunately, as the change they experienced shook the world around them, maintaining such intimate relationship became more and more difficult. Suspected of political revolution, some were imprisoned or killed. Religious jealousy impacted livelihoods and threatened the health and safety of the faithful. Fear began to taint the longing for fellowship, and some began to avoid what they had craved in hopes of escaping notice. The resulting loneliness only exacerbated their fears, putting faith itself in jeopardy.
The writer of the letter to some of the formerly Jewish Christians addresses this problem directly. He reminded them that they had entered a sacred space by becoming a part of God’s family. This sanctuary of the faithful was their protection against the hopelessness around them, the hopelessness and fear that caused others to torment them. If they abandoned that family relationship they became again what they had been before, and the conviction that had been safety within would become doom without.
As millennia have passed and some cultures have made the story of Jesus a familiar thing, we have forgotten the transformation that shook the entire world. Our familiarity has bred entitlement, arrogance, and indifference to the incredible gift our Savior bestowed. Rather than crave the company of like hearts, we relegate our contact to formal designated conferences, and suspiciously guard our inner selves from the knowledge of others. We are not family and our emotional ties are stunted because we either were never changed or drew back from the cost. We may show up when required without fail, but we have forsaken the assembly.
Hebrews 10:19–25 (CSB): Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus— he has inaugurated for us a new and living way through the curtain (that is, through his flesh)— and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, since he who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.
“I was yelling at Mr. Meanie! He just WON’T! LEAVE! ME! ALONE! I can’t do anything right anymore!”
The above came from my tearful, sobbing seven year old son. He had thrown his playthings and rushed to his room growling like a cornered tiger. To an outsider it might have looked like a temper tantrum, but tantrums are intentional and controlled. In that moment my son was helpless, trapped by his own mind and desperately screaming for help. This is the face of OCD.
My son is bright and beautiful. He can build anything he can imagine with Legos. He knows more than I ever realized existed about dinosaurs. He loves Godzilla and could probably provide sound effects for the movies with his imitation skills. He has a gift for finding the lonely and offering love. He adores his little sister and, though they fight like cats and dogs, will demolish anyone else who dares to offend her.
One tiny part of that beautiful little brain malformed. A section of neurological wiring has a short. Thoughts that feel like his but are not, unbidden and unwelcome feelings, and unwilled behaviors originate in that shorted out, alien knot. Chemical help can mute them to a whisper. Therapy can provide strategies for working around the shirt in the wiring. Nothing will ever make them go away. His whole life will be a battle with Mr. Meanie, the alien inside.
For now, we turn off the lights and snuggle on the bed, his head on my chest and his hand clutching my arm. Worship music plays from my phone, his choice, soft and soothing in its reminder of a love that bears his pain. He doesn’t fully understand it yet, but he can feel it, and his tension fades. We have quieted Mr. Meanie. For now.
The bomb hit at sunrise. Shards of glass melted into the asphalt, like black ice waiting to land me on the flat of my back. Twisted metal beams hung overhead, barely visible in the greenish haze that should have been sky. I couldn’t breathe.
Debris filled my vision, the emptiness overwhelming. The whining creak of frayed steel grated on my awareness as the beams cast weird, indistinct, swaying shadows into the ash. I shuddered, unable to step over them as if they were as tangible and insurmountable as their counterparts above.
The clatter of falling brick jerked my gaze painfully to the side, and I gasped into the wind. Smoke threaded into my lungs and I clutched my throat, coughing desperately for what oxygen remained in the thick air. The bomb would kill me yet.
I tripped over the layers of blackened sheet metal littering the street as I stumbled back the way I had come. I had forgotten to put on boots when the bomb woke me, and the metal sliced through my toes, blood drenching my sock. I clutched at the wounds in fetal position, wailing like an infant. My cries mingled with the creaks and rattles and drifting smoke until no other thoughts penetrated. I slept, utterly spent, alone in the silence.
Very often in the circles labeling themselves as Christian we find evidence of the idea that emotions have nothing to do our walk with God. It may be expressed as the noble sentiment that our actions should be ruled by reason, which is true but only to a point. The human brain is an incredibly complex organ, created with the capacity for both reason and emotion, so what is the godly view of emotion?
Think of a newborn infant. No longer automatically receiving sustenance through the bloodstream, it’s body experiences need for the first time. Physical discomfort awakens fear and sadness expressed by crying. When the baby is fed the need is filled, awakening happiness and contentment. No longer surrounded by warm, quiet darkness, the baby experiences cold and light for the first time, those discomforts awakening loneliness and anger. When the baby is snuggled in its mother’s arms it is warmed and sheltered, awakening love. As the child grows, those emotions will become tools for teaching reason and relationship. When the early needs of a child are not properly met, only certain emotions are awakened, and the child’s reasoning will be lacking some of the tools needed to form a complete picture of the world.
God created the human mind to develop in this way, to exhibit both emotion and reason, to require both. So what role does emotion play in the life of a person who bears God’s name? What do the scriptures have to offer about feelings?
Deuteronomy 16:15 (CSB): You are to hold a seven-day festival for the Lord your God in the place he chooses, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, and you will have abundantjoy.
Galatians 5:22 (CSB): 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Nehemiah 2:3 (CSB): and replied to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should I not be sad when the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”
Ezra 10:1 (CSB): While Ezra prayed and confessed, weeping and falling facedown before the house of God, an extremely large assembly of Israelite men, women, and children gathered around him. The people also weptbitterly.
Ecclesiastes 3:3–4, 8 (CSB): 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to love and a time to hate;
John 11:33–35 (CSB): When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you put him?” he asked. “Lord,” they told him, “come and see.” 35 Jesus wept.
Numbers 12:9 (CSB): The Lord’s anger burned against them, and he left.
Ephesians 4:26 (CSB): Be angry and do not sin., Don’t let the sun go down on your anger,
1 Kings 3:25–26 (CSB): 26 The woman whose son was alive spoke to the king because she felt great compassion, for her son. “My lord, give her the living baby,” she said, “but please don’t have him killed!”
Colossians 3:12, 14-16 (CSB): Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,… Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. And let the peace of Christ, to which you were also called in one body, rule your hearts. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.
The above scriptures hold just a handful of examples of emotion playing a central role both for God and for His people. One could even say that emotion is the driving force behind God’s interaction with, even His creation of, His children. His love for us, the deepest emotion we recognize as humans, is the source of our being and our salvation. What emotion do we offer in return?
The Word Worker 
