CP 170 The heartache no tablet can fix...

CP 170 The heartache no tablet can fix…
[First part, source unknown!]

*** I remember that there was a single moment in time when my mind formed the words, “So…this is what heartache is.”

I was experiencing an actual sensation in the centre of my chest. Not a pain. No… that wasn’t it. I don’t remember fearing for my health.
I can only describe it as a ‘hollowness’. Like something had been removed. Like there was air in there where it shouldn’t be. Similar to indigestion, I suppose… but higher. It persisted. And persists, these years later. Oh, it has certainly diminished. Slowly. But I have accepted it as part of my physiology. I live with heartache.

I was (and am) surprised by that. I expected that death to change me. My mother and I were unusually close. She died too young. She suffered too long. I expected that death to change my attitude… my emotions… my perspective. I expected to cry. I expected to miss her. I knew it would change me… and change the world for me. But I didn’t expect that it would change me permanently… PHYSICALLY.

And yet, I have come to embrace that part of’ me - that heartache. It has become for me a persistent reminder that that love was REAL… and STRONG… and is PERSISTENT. That love, like that loss, has changed me. Is that what our now glorified Lord thinks as he ponders the marks in his own hands… the hollowness in his own side? “My love has changed me. My love… for YOU.” ***

I have not the foggiest idea who wrote the above. It’s one of those snippets I’ve collected over the years. I’ll acknowledge the author as soon as I know who it is. It struck a chord when I first came across it. Today, as I’m presenting it to you, I’m moved by it. What a notion! My Lord Jesus the Christ has an imprint in his heart, for eternity, as a consequence of his love for me. Our Lord is forever changed because he loved!

Think about that. Receive it. Meditate on it. Inwardly digest it. Our glorified Lord is different, even deeper in heart, aching for us, because he loved us.

(One final question which I should probably ask next week, not this week. “Have you ever loved with such risk of hurt/rejection, that you are indelibly changed, for good?)

My friends, may you be challenged, confronted, pummeled and brought to your knees as you discover, in spirit, your place and role in the Calvary story in the next few days. And may you then be comforted by those eternally valid words, “It is finished!” To know the meaning of that phrase is to know that the Father in heaven is at peace with you.

Catch you after Easter.

Fred