"The Embrace of the Spirit"

    "Why is the man crying, Mommy?"  The little boy looked at his mother with puzzled concern.
    An older gentleman sat in the surgical waiting room of the hospital where the boy and his mother waited while the boy's sister underwent a tonsillectomy.  The man noticeably began to weep after a doctor came and spoke quietly with him.

    "The doctor just told him that his wife died in surgery," said the mother to her son.  Without hesitating, the boy arose from his chair and walked to where the man sat weeping.  He touched the man's hand to get his attention, and then climbed up into the his lap, laying his head on the old gentleman's chest.  The man embraced the boy, and let the tears flow.  After several minutes, he looked up, took the boy's face into his hands, and kissed him on the cheek.  "Thank you" he whispered, and then got up and slowly walked out of the waiting room.

    With tears flowing from her own eyes, the mother took her son into her arms when he returned to her.  "Darling, what you just did for that gentleman was one of the most wonderful things I have ever seen," she said, adding her own kiss to his cheek.  The little boy looked at his mother, again puzzled.  "But Mommy, I didn't do anything," he said.  "I just helped him cry."

    "Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: He is gracious, and full of compassion" (Psalm 112:4).

    Sometimes our best interests still the hand of God.  He may have to allow challenges to remain in order for a necessary work of grace to be fulfilled in our lives.  To deliver us would be to harm us, or perhaps to harm those who will ultimately be blessed by the life that flows from us because of the death known by us.  In such times, we can be sure that our "gracious and full of compassion" Heavenly Father helps us to cry.  He draws so very near to His hurting children, and but a little faith will somehow let us know that the embrace of the Spirit envelopes us in a love so caring that our tears are His tears. This is the truth, a reality we may not feel, see, or sense, but which graces us nonetheless.  "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1).

    He helps us to cry.  Of all the foul and horrid lies our spiritual enemies seek to foist upon us, perhaps the most egregious involves the notion that God doesn't care when we hurt.  In truth,He more than cares.  Indeed, if for just the briefest moment, we could feel what our Heavenly Father feels when sorrow, pain and loss wracks our heart, we would know that He draws so very near to us in our hurts.  May we be confident of the embrace, the embrace of the Spirit, even when we cannot feel, sense, or understand the Lord's way.  Or, as someone wise and knowing once said, "When we cannot understand His hand, we can trust His heart."

"His compassions fail not."
(Lamentations 3:22)