Seasons of Adversity

This is a famous statue, carved by Michaelangelo, called "Pieta".  It is, as you can see, Mary holding Christ after He has been taken down off the cross.  Presumably she did this, though we can hope Joseph of Arimathea and John the Beloved did as much as they could to spare her.

It's worthwhile contemplating.  There are a lot of little details.  For instance, look at Christ's face:

Do you see the smile?  "It is finished", remember?  But also look at Mary's face:

She doesn't understand.  Do you think any mama does, when she loses her Boy, even if He is Messiah?

This is to get us thinking in the right way when contemplating something I've noticed lately.  A couple of my good internet friends are having sudden, drastic health crises in their families, and literally almost everyone I know is dealing with some kind of out-of-the-way adversity. 

The Husband's plant is having, for the second year in a row, to lay off many of their hourly workers as the economy keeps getting worse.  (They re-hire them when the slow season is over, but that still means that plenty of families will be spending the holidays on unemployment.  I don't know many households that can comfortably take an income-cut of 50%.)  Others are dealing with deaths, sickness, and worries.

Adversity is no fun, otherwise it wouldn't be called "adversity".  And despite American tendencies toward a certain stoicism that I think is left over from our Puritan heritage, I don't think God wants us to deny that adversity hurts.  Just look at some of the Psalms, particularly those authored by David.  It's all right to tell the Lord that it hurts; it's not all right to accuse Him of not knowing what He's doing.

When adversity seems to come all at once, all around you, it makes you wonder if there's not something bigger happening than just the normal ickiness of life in a fallen world.  I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that, in this spiritual battlefield where we're all stationed, there are times when the fighting gets particularly thick.  We can't see the war, so we never know when we're in the midst of a spiritual Battle of the Bulge.  (And we're smack in the middle of the bulge in the line.)

To which of course, the only sensible response is to determine to hold the line, a la Thlaylai (Bigwig) in Watership Down:

"My Chief Rabbit told me to stay and defend this run, and until he says otherwise I shall stay here."

To me, the best part of the quote is afterward, when the invading rabbit realizes what he's up against:

"A chill ran through the General.  It had never occurred to him that Bigwig was not the Chief Rabbit."

Remember that Smile on the statue above?  Michaelangelo was not inspired--he was not sculpting Scripture.  But I think he had the same ability to know the nature of God from created things that all of us do; and that Smile is important.  That Smile can help us remember that sheer, stubborn, donkeyish planting our feet and refusing to deny the love of God, and refusing to give in, even when it hurts, is our most powerful weapon.  (Hint: technically this donkey-ness is called Faith; there's a good reason in folklore that a donkey has a cross on its back.)  He has told us to stay and defend the run; until He says otherwise, here we stay.

Or, to go back to the Battle of the Bulge, we simply turn our backs on our Adversary and say:

"Nuts!"

Even Christ, on the cross, acknowledged the pain, but in the end He demonstrated for us that
we are squarely in the grip of God, Who finishes what He starts: "Into Thy hands I commit My spirit."

Sometimes that's all we can say; I just wanted to also give you the picture of that Face, and that Smile, to think on.

Cheers,

Breanna