“And so it was, as her soul was departing (for she died), that she called his name Ben-Oni; but his father called him Benjamin. So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem).” Genesis 35:18-19 (NKJV).
One final wave of heavy tears and heaving breath forcibly pushed an anguished declaration from Rachel’s parched lips, “Benoni! Son of my sorrow!” Her husband, Israel, watched mournfully as the flame that had been the light and warmth of his life for so many years flickered desperately in the eyes of his beloved wife, then disappeared. He turned tear-laden eyes to the new child crying in his quivering arms and a painfully earnest whisper escaped his lips, “No, my love, his name is Benjamin. Son of my right hand.”
The “right hand” in the ancient cultural context that serves this Scriptural account, was an understood symbol of power and authority. In just these two short verses of Genesis 35, we encounter an inalterable, inescapable reality that tirelessly accompanies every child of God on this heavily layered emotional journey of life. We find Rachel’s deepest sorrow and the hope of Israel’s prophesied tomorrow marrying in her very last breath! It’s within this painful, unavoidable tension between “Benoni” and “Benjamin” that the glory of the Lord lives!
Hundreds of years later another baby’s cry will pierce the same skies of Bethlehem that Benjamin was born under generations before. Here we see, again, the sorrow of humanity and the authority of God divinely colliding within a soft covering of skin!
“He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”
Isaiah 53:3 (NKJV).
“But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,” Hebrews 10:12 (NIV).
The cultures of this world use every platform possible to loudly advocate for remedies, therapies and medicines that will soothe our feelings of anguish and eradicate the anxieties that plague us.
Many of these methods are helpful and productive in so many ways, but we must never let ourselves think, as Christians, that anxiety invalidates our calling! Our Savior is proof that anxiety and calling coexist! Scripture tells us that Jesus lived his life “a man of sorrows familiar with grief” and we see His extreme anxiety colliding with His divine calling in the Garden of Gethsemane on the pathway to Calvary.
“And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Luke 22:44 (KJV).
Your ministry is not invalidated because you stumble in and out of seasons of depression! Your calling is not nullified by the years you have fought with anxiety! Your purpose is not removed from you by the mornings you can’t seem to move from your bed! The divine authority we have been given by God through His Spirit still lives in every drop of tearful sorrow that we hide and in every drop of anxiety-ridden sweat that shakes violently from our foreheads! The glory of God is not extricated by any trauma of the flesh, in fact, it intertwines with it! Glory lives right there in that intersection between pain and promise! Glory dwells right there in the still “pulled-apart” places of our hearts! In those life-spaces, we would rather disappear right out of, Jesus appears right into! When we cry out to God in agony, “This pain is too great!” God whispers back, just as Israel did to Rachel, “My love, the promise is greater!” Sorrow will not have the final word on your life, it will be the authority of Jesus Christ.
So, what do we do with this ever-uncomfortable reality that glory most often doesn’t feel glorious at all? We keep right on actively ministering to those in need around us and we will soon find that the glory of God has gathered up everything that was lost in the wake!
Isaiah 58
6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
The word for “glory” in verse 8 of this passage is the Hebrew word “awsaf”. It means “to gather or collect into the company of others”. For further context, it was the responsibility of the rearguard in ancient Hebrew culture (literally “gathering host”) to pick up all that was left behind as the camp marched forward! Keep moving forward with your multitude of anxieties and your camp-full of struggles! You will one day find that you have not only walked into the light of your promised healing, but that the glory of the Lord has gathered up every hope that you thought you had left behind and every drop of sweat that you poured out in anxiety to build a glorious testimony to the world around you of His great faithfulness!
Be the first to comment