A Jon Post

There’s a moment. I don’t really know how to describe it. It comes after a prayer, a Bible study, a tear, or a simple breaking of the soul.
It’s the silence of God.
I’ve prayed and cried with a man who holds his dying son in his arms and looks at me and asks me what he should do. He has just heard from his wife that another of his children in his distant home is in the hospital. “What should I do Jon? I can’t go home and leave my son here at the hospital, and my wife cannot watch over my other children while one is in the hospital. What should I do?”
So we pray and cry and wait.
And we’re answered by the silence of God.
See it’s easy to walk into a place of suffering with stories of overcoming obstacles, deliverance, and God’s goodness in times of trouble. But how am I supposed to look into the one good eye of a boy who is about to return home with a tumor hanging over his other eye because the one hospital in the country with chemotherapy is out of its chemotherapy treatment. What do I say to this boy of hope?
And the silence of God hangs thick and it nearly freezes the tears to our cheeks.
Andrew Peterson, a singer/songwriter said this:

There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And He's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone
All His friends are sleeping and He's weeping all alone
And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not

I think Jesus knows what the Silence of God feels like. I think He’s intimately acquainted with the torture of the soul that comes with a desperate prayer and the inky blackness that drapes over the heart in response.
I think Jesus hasn’t forgotten the sorrow that Albano, Marçelino and Rosina carry.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.(Isaiah 53:3)
Wow… a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
See, I may not understand what my friends in oncology go through. I may not be able to wrap my mind around the intensity of the pain that they experience every day, hour, and ticking second in their beds.
But the man of sorrows does. He does. He’s familiar with their suffering.
What other God could I turn to than this? What other God answers sorrow and suffering, not by waving a magic wand and making us all smile and making it all go away… but by joining us in it.
Christ Jesus… the man of sorrows. He knows deeply the silence of God.

Recently at the hospital it seems there have not been as many patients. I think there is currently a shortage on medication, so people are being sent home to wait until it arrives. Still, there are the few, the few that are worth our time and worth our energy.

Amigos

It isn’t often we see friends who have been in the hospital a long time go home with hope for a healthy life. This Wednesday, however, Sobú, a man from Jon’s Bible study will be released. He has lost 11months with his wife and children and his right eye to the hospital, but he has not lost his life… or his smile. Today we talked and rejoiced together with him about the fact that God has not abandoned him. How faithful is our God. While healing and health is not the only way the Lord reveals His faithfulness, it is a breath of fresh air.

We also talked about the sweet upcoming reunion with his family, the impatient waiting until Wednesday, the first meal he wants to eat, etc. While we will miss his presence at the hospital, our hearts are full of joy and hope for his future. We want to send him home covered in prayer. Will you pray with us?

• Pray that the tumor will not return to Sobú’s eye, or anywhere else.
• Pray the the current wound where his eye has been removed will heal completely and without infection.
• Pray that his left eye would properly adjust, as he is currently having some trouble seeing properly, especially when reading.

We'll miss him!

Thank you for your involvement in our ministry, your involvement in Sobú’s life. Thanks for making it possible for Jon and I to be here; it is such a privilege.

The following a song we’ve recently been singing from the Passion: Awakening album. It is our heart, our mission.

King of Heaven (Isaiah 61)

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh
King of heaven come down

We’ll sing the gospel to the poor
We’ll go to comfort those who mourn
You’ll put together what’s been torn
King of Heaven

We come together in the wave of God
We stand together in Your great compassion
Pouring out our hearts and lives
Fill us up with an expectation

We’ll sing the news of all Your grace
We’ll help the broken-hearted praise
You’ll put Your glory on display
King of Heaven

You help the broken cities rise
Out of the wreckage You’ll bring life