By his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)
My spiritual father, Robert Daniels, hungered for love and acceptance his entire life. Then one day his wife took him to a revival service, and he was gloriously filled with the Holy Spirit. What he experienced in that moment was all of the love and the acceptance that he had longed for and found nowhere else. This created in him an insatiable hunger for the presence of God, and the result was that from that very day he began to spend countless hours in God’s presence every day, seeking his face, giving him glory, worshipping him, and enjoying sweet fellowship with him.
Unfailing love; its what we desire more than anything else in this world (Prov. 19:22). Its what we were created both to give and to receive. Unconditional love is the type of love that is willing to pay any price and suffer any plight in order to serve and protect its object. Nothing speaks to core of our being more than being loved unconditionally, and in the absence of unconditional love, a deep void is left at the center of our being.
Brokenness is the void that is left by the absence of unconditional love. When we are rejected, when we are abandoned, when we are betrayed, abused, forsaken . . . brokenness is the result. Brokenness is the soul’s revolt against experiences that it was never intended to have. Brokenness is the soul’s way of saying, No, this isn’t right! This is not what I was created for! I was created for love, for unfailing love . . . to love and to be loved!
The experience of pain is an absurdity to the soul.
By his wounds we are healed. Jesus suffered the ultimate absurdity in order to restore the equilibrium of our souls. He brings about this equilibrium, not by providing an answer to the absurdity of human suffering, but by taking his place at the head of the parade. By the cross he took to himself the sum total of anguish, as Denise Levertov says, and he drank even the lees of that cup.
The fellowship of his sufferings is the place at which he fellowships with us in our suffering, and in the course of that fellowship, brings us into the presence of the Father, into the fullness of the Spirit, and into the heart of God’s unfailing love. By the cross he reconciles us to God and restores us to our created purpose, so that by his cross we find the meaning of our lives. In his presence we are healed, and that healing results in the exclamation of the soul: Yes, this is right! This is what I was created for! I was created for love, for unfailing love . . . to love and to be loved!
His sacrifice brings healing to every broken heart. And there is no brokenness that cannot be mended in God’s presence.
