Here's a Story

There is a story about a woman whose child dies after only a few days of life. She is so distraught, so in pain, that she wraps her child in linen and goes around seeking anyone who could revive her child. She goes to faith healers, magicians, and witch doctors, and no one can help. But somebody says, “Secluded, high up in the mountains, there is a holy man who is so close to God that he can bring your child back to life, he can raise the dead. It might be just a story, but you never know.”

            This woman goes to the mountains and searches for this mysterious holy man. And after days of searching in the mountains, she stumbles upon a little hut beside a beautiful lake of water. She nocks on the door and a little old man comes to the door. She says, “I do not know if you’re the man I’m looking for, but I need your help.” She begins to cry and tells this man her story. Once she is done, he says, “I am the man you have been searching for. I can help you. But first you must go down into the village and you must look for a home that has not been struck with suffering. And from that home, you must bring back a handful of mustard seeds. Once I have those mustards seeds, then I can help you.”

            So she goes down into the city. She goes from house to house and she can’t find any house that has not been struck by suffering, death, pain, and loss. But somehow, as she hears the story of other peoples suffering, she gradually comes to term with her own. Until, one day, she is finally able to bury her child in the earth.

            The point is, we often want to say to those that are suffering, “Here’s the answer. Here’s God. Here is what you need to do to fix the problem.” But you know what? Sometimes the answer of faith is, “I will suffer along side you. We will share our stories. Together we can provide a space of healing.” God is not some answer. Because when we hold on to God as if he is some answer, then we don’t actually go through the mourning process. We hide ourselves from it. When we treat God like that, he is an object. He is an idea we have to hold on to in order to cope with life. Instead, let us have a community of broken people suffering together. And in that space, God is manifest in the relationship of healing. The woman was going to the holy man, who is so close to God, so that she could have her answers, when she finds that the whole time, surrounding her in her city, was the love of others and the healing that she so desired from God.
            Love works something like this. If I desire food, I desire it until I have it. Once I have it, I no longer desire it. But with people, you cannot lover or desire someone you have never met, because you never met them. Peter Rollins, author and speaker, says this, "The romantic truth is this, 'I never needed you until I met you. But when I met you, I realized I always needed you'. The need is retroactively given...whenever  you meet someone, they are a universe still to know. The coming of your beloved is the still to come, the not yet. So when you meet the person you love, desire is born and need is born."