angst – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

The left footprint on display in the fresh-turned soil bore no resemblance to its counterpart. My right foot featured a really high arch while the left one lacked an arch at all. This one’s imprint carried the appearance of a flat board.

Thus, my bare feet had left a trail of odd alternating marks as I leapt to keep pace with my daddy’s longer strides across the plowed furrows.

Yes, the hardship of poliomyelitis from a prior time had left permanent marks. Yet, here I was curiously limping. . . and frolicking.

We don’t find people who are prone to relish suffering. I would certainly not be counted among them. Words like hardship or adversity or pain stir in many of us a cringe of resistance and angst.

Still, visiting the Bible’s pages we routinely find triumph mingled with trial. Pleasure and pain show up as near neighbors. Happiness keeping company with hardship.

We muse over these strangely-matched companions. Especially so in reflective seasons like Holy Week, the period of Jesus’ (and history’s) darkest hours leading to his awful crucifixion.

How perplexing seems the phrase of the New Testament writer, “looking to Jesus who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross*

Enduring flogging and a torturous public execution with its attending shame, Christ’s suffering comes to us as ‘hardship’ utterly redefined.

So, we revisit our prayer – “accepting hardship as a pathway to peace”.

The apprentice of Jesus comes to actually affirm the beauty of suffering when endured in a grace lavishly supplied. Holding the master’s image in view the disciple settles into an element of peace words fail to capture. The difference is found through the example and presence of the resurrected, sacrificial coach.

Christ’s disciples make up that unusual sampling of humans who reconcile the paradox – hardship, an indispensable part of the good life.

He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace*

“Autumn! Get those pants back up, right this minute!”

When eight pre-school children of four young missionary couples (two M.K.s per household) suddenly go quiet in their outdoor play, the concern of parents increases by degree. First, an observation by a mom whose voice barely masks a growing angst.

“Anyone notice the kids aren’t making any noise?”

From here all the earlier conversation, random banter, interchanges of whatever among the parents, trails off. Anxious thoughts roll in, We’re in Black Mamba country. . . What if they’ve wandered off down by the trees and. . .

In this instance, as it turned out, we didn’t need to worry of strayed children.

Little Autumn’s father had stepped across the living room in which we adults had all been relaxing. Peering out an elevated window, he spotted the little ones. Our children stood in a circle beneath a Frangipani tree at the house’s edge, surveying from a distance curiosities of the human anatomy.

Parents, especially the moms, sprang for the outside doors. They had, just prior to the alarming shout, entered into a quietly reverent prayer time. So much for that. . .

In days following, the mommies and daddies regaled one another with their reactions and those of their urchins.

“Mark, did you lower your pants out there before the others?”

“No mommy”, he moaned. “I tried, but I couldn’t get them to unbutton.”

Sarah, one of the other mom’s present, shared on another occasion a special nugget of wisdom. Noting the useful role humor carries in the sometimes overburdening work of international missions.

“He who laughs lasts.”

Tag: angst

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