The recent issue of “Again” magazine arrived in my mailbox this morning and I saw that “Our Life in Christ” host Steve Robinson had written an article titled “What I learned at Vacation Bible School”. At the end of the article I saw that Steve has a blog called Pithlessthoughts. Being the blog lover that I am, I decided to pay his blog a visit. I discovered a link to an unpublished book of his online titled “Love, Death, and Love:A Journey Through Spiritual Despair”. I highly recommend you read this short book of his, especially those who are presently experiencing deep spiritual despair. You have to start reading at the bottom of the page and read up since it is in blog format. I found his thoughts profound and I think most of you will too. The following is a taste of what you will read in Steve’s book.
“This is a book about sorrow. It is not about crisis, of some extraordinary evil or desperate station in life dealt you by fate or choice or Satan or God. It is of a kind of life, a life of mourning, of a spiritual melancholy, of perpetual sorrows of a depth and intensity that can only come from believing in God, or longing to believe in God in the face of the chaotic ambiguities and havoc of life.
This book is for the ones who find the experience of spiritual joy elusive. It is for you who feel guilty because you fake the happy Christian life to be accepted by a group who, deep inside, you believe are for the most part faking it too. It is for those who find more reasons to question God, to rail at Him, to argue with Him than to praise Him. It is for those who have a deep and hurting hollow place within them that no sermon, no prayer, no scripture verse, no spiritual exercise has ever touched with healing. It is for those who struggle silently with a sense of abandonment and loneliness in the midst of friends and lovers. It is for those who are exhausted by desperation and waiting for God. It is for those who sometimes feel they can wait on Him no longer and consider death a treasure to be sought more than life. It is for you who have considered suicide because death held out to you an enchanting promise that no logic or philosophy could dissuade you from believing…….”
“……….The dark side of spirituality is the truth that, whether we like it or not, or whether we understand it or not, pain is most often where we meet God. It is in the dark night of the soul that we meet God in a way we can in no other place. It is the experience of the absence of God that makes His presence most acutely known. It is in the winter of the heart that we feel most forsaken by God. Yet it is standing there, abandoned by Him in the cold and dark, lost in a bleak and unfamiliar place, if we will wait for Him, that we will sooner or later meet God face to face.
And, yes, sometimes it means waiting to death.”
