Suffering And Pain: Unexpected Unhurryনমুনা

Beyond Our Understanding

At times, God seems to have pruned back my faith structures so that I could grow in my ability to simply trust Jesus. During those seasons, I wasn’t losing faith. Instead, I realized later, I was losing something of my self-confident understanding of and approach to faith. I also relearned that Jesus is always bigger than my experience of him and always greater than any faith tradition presents him. Always. 

God is not limited by any human tradition, human expression, or human experience. 

But this truth can make me feel pretty insecure. Somehow I feel safe in my small understanding of Jesus, and I feel threatened by the sense that he is far greater than I’ll ever comprehend. Paul prayed that we might be empowered to know this unfathomable love of Christ. But am I willing to allow the Father to enable me to live in relationship with him who is far greater than I can ever fully wrap my mind around? This kind of spacious, unhurried knowledge of God has been one of the resurrection fruits following the death of certain of my understandings of God.

Then, thinking about John 15, I was struck by the idea that a branch that has been pruned has a single primary need—to remain well connected to the vine. As Jesus put it, “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me”. When we experience loss that seems to diminish our faith, we need more than ever to remain deeply connected to God through Christ. 

Unlike trees that have no choice about sending their roots deep into the ground, we who are God’s children are free to choose between responding to God or resisting him, between saying yes to him and saying no. Will we keep abiding in the One who has allowed us to experience loss and then uses our times of loss as pruning places in our lives?

Lord God, it is—by your grace—my choice as to whether I abide in you. Please help me comprehend more of your incomprehensible love so that even when the pruning seems more than I can handle, I never hesitate to send my roots deep into you.

From An Unhurried Life by Alan Fadling