The Care and Feeding of the Heart: Turning Tragedy to Triumph.

Welcome to the Training Table where you can depend on a feast for the born-again heart, carefully prepared, to help you run the Godly and good race (Hebrews 12:3)!

Today’s menu at the table is in response to a recent and horrific tragedy in Jindo, South Korea and the ferry Sewol sinking with mostly school children on board. At least 146 people are confirmed dead. Earlier, when the death toll was reported to be 128, authorities had said that 174 people were still missing. Mostly children.

Upon thinking of this inconceivable loss, I was reminded of another tragedy at sea—and the story of faith amidst the unavoidable trials of living in a thoroughly broken world that surrounds it. A tragedy and triumph that has had positive impact on millions of people ever since.

Today’s feast of the heart deals with the periods of our lives when the real meaning, importance, and efficacy of our faith is tested; when maintaining a deep sense of gratitude and peace is the most challenging ordeal of all: In times of the deepest pain and darkest suffering.

These are the times when our theology is most challenged and revealed for what it truly is; or truly could be. As CS Lewis said, “If I could only get rid of this toothache, I could write something about pain!” It is so very difficult to separate ourselves from the past, present or future of pain while pledging to maintain an attitude of gratitude isn’t it? It would appear as though the only way to separate ourselves is to imagine we were indeed made for another world…

Clearly, the only way to achieve deep abiding peace and joy in the midst of the obvious suffering of the world is NOT to either deny it; or assure that we’re distracted from facing it; but RATHER denounce being a “slave to suffering” by, a) seeing suffering and brokenness as a very momentary plight of living in a fallen world and b) seeing suffering as a means by which God’s love and truth can break through and turn our minds and hearts towards loving Him and neighbor as self more and more each day.

Dear friends, there is one faith, one word, and another attitude of deep and abiding peace that encompasses this issue of “conjoining suffering with thanksgiving”: a) a faith in the hope of salvation and b) an abiding attitude of, “Whatever my lot…”. Of, consider it ALL joy (James 1)! Of, “…we know that for those who love God ALL things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28)!

Please consider the opposite of these two things—hopelessness, and the ever-shifting sands of circumstance controlling our lives, and not an abiding faith—and ask yourself, “What belief system(s) seems most pervasive today in the culture and in my own sphere of concern and influence? Why is this so? And what can I do to offer an abiding, immovable hope and deep peace in another’s life amidst a trial of any kind?”

As I read and prayed over the tragedy at sea in Jindo, South Korea, another tragedy at sea came to mind. If I may, I would like to simply offer a “redemptive fruit, outcome” of this historic event—and its context.

Please relish the very familiar words to the world-famous hymn below.

Please imagine the countless people who have been consoled and filled with a renewed hope, a deeper gratitude, and an abiding peace that passes all understanding… and yet makes understandable and redeemable any trial God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit might allow ONLY for His glory and our temporal and eternal good.

Please, especially, consider the hymn’s refrain: Do the principles and practice of your faith consist of a “refrain”—a recurring theme of your faith—that you can articulate with a story, an assurance, a humility, and witness that’s been tested and refined and retold in the fires of redemptive suffering? Come hell, high water, or abiding happiness… What exactly is the refrain of your faith?

“It is Well With My Soul”
“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.