It becomes rough, doing this type of thing. For me, the answer has always been with Jesus is Emmanuel, God With Us, who knows and shares our sorrows and pain.

Alone with my pain,
my fears,
my anxieties,
where can I go
except to the foot of your cross,
O Jesus?
Here I know
how well you understand
the fear,
the ache,
the grief,
the separation that comes
from our fellow men
when marked out
by suffering,
sickness,
pain.

Oh Lord,
who has numbered all my days,
I give to you
this sorry gift,
a drink of ashes and water,
pain,
and know
that you have drunk the cup of
pain and suffering to the dregs
and will hold my hand
each step of the way.
___

How hard it is to deal with the fact that God is not Santa Claus, that he set up a universe filled with entropy and things that go wrong, but he did, and he is much more interested in our growth as children of God than our immediate pleasure. There really is no answer better than Job’s: “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Yet with Jesus’ incarnation, suffering and dying, there is knowledge that he knows our pain, and as part of the body of Christ, he shares in our sufferings and helps us, sometimes by making us the suffering Christ for others to help, sometimes to be Veronica to wipe the brow of Christ on his way to Calvary.

No easy answers, no quick and easy comfort, just like the crucifixion was no cake walk, and really was the darkest of tragedies for all Jesus’ followers. We can shake our fist at God, and die angry at the way he set up the universe, despair in the darkeness, or let him transform us wherever we are. Our choice. And one each of us has to make.
—-
Do I not here the bells tolling,
one for each year of my life,
how few the number seems
when set against
the starry sky,
the count of sand
even the flow of history,
how short this mortal coil,
this gift of God
this time of trial.

If it were not for you, Lord,
this brief short span
could have no focus,
no purpose,
nothing but a brief flare
dying out in pain and fear.

Yet Lord,
If we turn to you,
if we humble ourselves,
and realize who we are,
where we are, and what we are,
we will discover
you are the one who calls us,
you are the one who loves us,
you are the one beckons us home,
home far away
from the endless night.

O Lord,
You suffered so much to call us home.
With humble hearts overwhelmed
with the grieving tears of love and repentence,
may we turn to you
for your healing touch,
and never be separated from you again.