I Do Suffer

It is a strange joke to me, how aptly the directors named our online blogging journal of the play, calling it: I Do Suffer. The title refers to a line of Benedick's, where, being desired by Beatrice to expound her "good parts," for which he suffers love, he replies, "A good epitaph! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will!"

This has been the most painful semester of my two and a half years at PHC. I have learned what it means to suffer, and to love against my will. For, you know, Benedick's line was playful, born of happy love, but we are not always so inclined. What happens when the will is against loving? Shakespeare declared in his sonnet 116 that "love alters not where it alteration finds." It is one thing to say those words; it is another to live them. Faithful love is not nearly so much fun as first love, and yet, to be real, first loves must be faithful.

Let us not deny the pain, nor belittle it, neither. A triumph is only half itself when accomplished with too much ease. The heart is sore... sick unto death. In a moment of anguish, I wrote this:

I cannot bid my heart be still
That were to die, but ah,
Heart beating still, what pain
To, living, ache, to - living! - die -
Continual...

You wonder, perhaps, why I write these things. Why especially on the internet? Why expose wounds to have them laughed at, or perchance pitied, which is almost worse? Our culture shuns nothing in the world more than vulnerability, excepting God.

It is because of God that I do so. The full strength of the enemy army must be given, its numbers detailed, its mighty men, its bronze and leather and scarlet and pride, or the triumph will be unnoticed. Since the triumph is God's, I must omit nothing that may magnify His glory.

I do this also to show you that Christians are flesh and blood, and that the hope we proclaim is effectual, not unable to solace us in our moments of temptation to despair, but more than able, oh, more than able! I told you that I have known pain this semester. I tell you now that I have also known peace. I have cried out to God, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Does this not strike you? I have cried out to God, the Other, the Holy, the One-in-Three, whose radiance fills, not just the earth, not just Heaven, but all the corners of the universe, whose power is unimaginable, who made man for Himself, whose praise is infinitely sung - for He is infinitely worthy of praise - and who is the Beauty of all things.... and whom I have traitorously offended in word, thought, and act, from my conception.

And this is my God! My own beloved, who stooped to be Paraclete, my Comforter. He stooped - can it be possible that this does not strike you? - to gather up my broken head and heart and soul into His arms, my head that has so many times denied Him to fashion vainglory for itself, my heart that has lusted after many idols, my soul that had not sought Him, never sought Him until He called me.

My God! Is it possible? Look you for any higher wonder, any more passionate love, any greater metanarrative than this - I defy you to find one -: that God created man, and suffered man to sin against His majesty, and suffered man to live, sinning, and suffered His only Son, His best beloved, to be humbled, to come to earth, to serve where He should have been served, to love where He should have been loved, to be sinned against where He should have been adored, to die where men should have laid down their lives by the million for Him, and all this to redeem a stubborn, stiff-necked world full of men, among them, I.

All this was for His glory, and what a shout there must have been when He rose again! I have always stood in awe of that moment when the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Triumph! It is finished! The war to end all wars has been waged and won, for the glory of God, and to restore, oh, to restore us to fellowship with the Most High. Have you ever woken from a long sickness to find the ache of your body suddenly gone, to feel light and fresh and young and free again? It is that, only in the soul, the soul that is so sick, sick unto death.

Can you not see why I have peace? I say to my Lord, with the Psalmist, "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Now hear this, my dear... hear the sum of this moment's worship. "But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works."

If you have not understood this, then you have understood nothing. We do it - I do it - to tell of all His works. I do not write all of this to expound my pain and how I suffer. I write this that you may taste and see that the Lord is good, that His steadfast love endures forever, and that He is the only worthy object of praise.

My Lord, do with me as you will, for I am yours entirely.