The invisible thread

When God took on the form of a human being in Christ Jesus, he experienced all that inhabiting flesh entails – exhaustion, hunger, thirst, pain, birth, death.  Like Jesus, all of have suffered physically, some in extreme and unbearable ways.  And we, like him, have experienced the sweetness of health and well-being, of inhabiting our physical bodies and all of the goodness that comes to us through our senses.

But what of the emotional aspects of being human – joy, anger, betrayal, contentment, rejection, doubt, regret, fear, grief?  Here are the sources of our highest highs and our lowest lows.  Just as you and I have times of deep sadness and soaring joy, Jesus knew the range of human emotions – the sting of betrayal by his closest friends, the depths of grief when he learned of the death of his friend Lazarus, the joy of the wedding feast, the anger at seeing the temple defiled by the money changers.  He felt tenderness towards the woman who washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, he asked if it might be possible to be spared the cup of crucifixion.  He said to his disciples, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”

To be human is to embark upon a lifelong quest to understand and to be understood.  If we are lucky, we encounter someone along the way who just seems to understand what we are going through.  Even though they can’t change the hard circumstances we are in, they are somehow able to bring us a measure of comfort just by their presence and a few quiet words of understanding.  Intuitively, we sense in them the invisible thread that knits certain people together, the thread of shared experience.  There are many in our world and in our midst whose souls are overindulged with sorrow.  Blessed are we that we have each other and a Savior who knows us deeply and understands our deepest doubts, hopes, fears and joys.

Rachel Roby, Parish Administrator