Dealing with Disillusionment

Earlier this year my dad gave my some of his books he had acquired over the years as a pastor and yesterday as i was sitting in my diabetes doctor's office i read this chapter.  I have said this before the Batcave blog or Real Life Online has been for me about providing encouragement to others.  I had 2 blogs ready and as i said i came across this short chapter in  Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life by Chuck Swindoll pastor of the radio ministry Insight for Living.  I believe we can all use this at some point in life.  On a side note i tagged Jennifer Amaral my doctor in a post about using this chapter on face book and when she came to talk to me she wanted to ask about the book.    So without further ado(i like that word) I give you the chapter Dealing with Disillusionment.

The prophet was in the pits.  Literally.  Like Poe's fanciful character, he was "sick, sick unto death."  Swamped with Disillusionment and drowning in despair, he cursed the day he was born and wondered why an abortion wasn't performed, killing him prior to his birth.

He screamed.  

Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and sorrow, so that my days have been spent in shame?  Jeremiah 20:18  

An exaggeration?  Not hardly.  Read the record for yourself.  Jeremiah's journal holds nothing back.  In chapter 20 the chief officer in the temple had him beaten(forty lashes), then placed in the stocks.  That means his feet, hands and neck were secured in a torturous device that caused his body to be bent almost double.  That happened after he was beaten!  Why?  Had he committed some crime?  No.  He had simply declared the truth.  He had done what was right--and this is what he got in return.  It hurt him deeply.

On top of all that, sarcastic whisperings swirled about.  His once-trusted friends tagged him with a nickname--MAGOR MISSABIB--meaning "terror on every side."  That also hurt.  He must have felt like a limp rag doll in the mouth of a snarling Doberman.  

  O Lord, Thou hast deceived me and I was deceived; Thou hast overcome me and prevailed.  I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me.......for me the word of the Lord has resulted in reproach and derision all day long.  Jeremiah 20:7-8  

This man is in anguish.  Prophet or not, he is struggling with God's justice.  His strange treatment.  Deep down he is questioning His presence.  "Where is He?  Why has Jehovah vanished at a time when I need him the most?"  

The ancient man of God is not alone with feelings like that.  Who hasn't wrestled with similar questions and doubts?  Few express it more vividly than Elie Wiesel in the terse, tightly packed sentences of his book Night.  Wiesel, a Jew, spent his teen aged years in a Nazi death camp in Birkenbau.  His young eyes witnesses tragedies too horrible to repeat.  The toll it took on him is best described in the foreward by French Nobel-prize-winning author Francois Mauriac:  

  For him (Wiesel). Nietzche's cry expressed an almost physical reality: God is dead, the God of love, of gentleness, of comfort..... has vanished forevermore.... And how many pious Jews have experienced this death.  On that day, horrible even among those days of horror, when the child watched the hanging of another child, who he tells us, had the face of a sad angel, he heard someone behind him groan:  "Where is God?  Where is He?  Where can he be now?"  

What desperate feelings!

  And one not need be in a concentration camp to have those thoughts.  Or doubled over in stocks and beaten with rods.  No, sometimes they come in the long, dark tunnel of suffering when the pain won't go away.  Or when a marriage partner who promised to stay "for better or for worse" breaks that vow.  Or when a long-sought-after dream goes up in smoke.  Or when we kiss a loved one goodbye for the last time.  

  Not always......but sometimes(usually unuttered and hidden away in the secret vaults of our minds) we question Jehovah's justice.  We ask, "Is He absent today?"  Personally, I cannot bring myself to chide Jeremiah.  The heavens above him appeared as brass.  His Lord's passivity disillusioned him.  The silence of God was more than he could take.  There are such times. I openly confess, when I too, wonder about why He permits certain things to occur that seemingly defy his character.  

  At those times I'm tempted to say what the prophet said"

  I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name.... 20:9 a

  "That's it! I'm tossing in my collar.  No more sermons and devotionals for this preacher.  Secular job here I come!"  But right about the time I start to jump, I experience what Jeremiah admitted:

  .....Then in my heart it becomes like a bursting fire shut up in my bones; and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it.  20:9 b

 Directly sent from God is a strong surge of hope, this cleansing confidence, this renewed sense of determination swelling up within me.  And the disillusionment is quickly replaced with his reassurance as He reminds me of the glorious climax of the hymn I often sing back to Him in full volume:

  "All is well,  all is well!"  

  Thank God, it is.  Recently I doubted that--like Jeremiah.  But not today.  Reassurance has returned.  Divine perspective has provided a fresh breeze of hope in the pits.  I have determined that disillusionment must go.  Now...... not later.  

  Like Magor-Missabib.  I ain't about to quit!  God has broken through the brass above.  With an antiphonal voice his angels answer, "All is well, all is well."