Take your vitamin.

Like most mornings, today’s news updates are overwhelmingly negative.  International tensions ooze a toxicity affecting millions who have no option but to suffer and endure.  Families in Texas are grieving unspeakable loss after torrential rains and flooding.  Here in the Hamilton area, several families lives are forever different after a serious multi-vehicle accident.

How do we survive this brokenness?  How do we find the joy?  

I’ve succumbed to my alliterative addiction (see what I did there?), and have put together a concoction we may call “Vitamin C.”  Spoiler alert:  this is a huge capsule.  There is nothing easy here.  However, these truths are essential for maintaining our spiritual well being as we seek to represent Christ well.

Here is the ingredient list:

Confirm the reality of God’s created order:  the brokenness in the world neither defies nor defines the reality that God is still the Creator.  He has authority over all things, even the brokenness.

Be courageous when the brokenness invades your life.  I can’t imagine what Jesus went through as He faced the cross.  The author of Hebrews put it this way:

 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
 (Heb. 12:1-3 ESV)

We tend to look at this text through the lens of theology.  But let’s consider it from a psychological perspective for a moment.  Going to the cross is probably the hardest thing any person has ever done - ever.  Jesus, while fully God, was fully human and experienced the same human struggles we do.  His anguish is well documented in the Gospels.  Yet, “for the JOY that was set before Him, [He] endured the cross . . .”  The future joy brought context to endure the present suffering.

There are two other “Vitamin C” ingredients in this text.  The author of Hebrews encourages his readers to also remember the cloud of those who lived faithfully before them.  In chapter 11, there is a long list of people whose lives were marked by dependence on God.  Even though some of them made poor choices, God was still faithful to them.  Reflecting on the stories of God’s faithfulness toward His people in the past can strengthen us in the present.

We are also encouraged to consider that Jesus Himself was sustained through the darkest experience in humanity’s  history . . . not just the suffering on the cross, but the suffering inflicted on Him because of the hostility of those around Him during this days of ministry and the crucifixion itself.

The Apostle Peter adds one more ingredient to our “Vitamin C”:

When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. (1 Pet. 2:23 ESV)

Throughout His time of suffering, Jesus committed Himself into the hands of the One who always judges righteously.  Like us, Jesus trusted His Heavenly Father to do what was right and good - even though it meant unspeakable suffering.

The ingredients in the bottle are guaranteed organic and healthy.  They are not guaranteed to be tasty.  Like eating healthfully, we choose to reframe our perspective of life’s daily moments as parts of God’s larger created order.  The majority of people will reject this vitamin altogether.  That does not negate the truths in this “vitamin C.”

God does provide joy even in the worst of life’s moments.  This is joy sourced in our confidence of WHO He is - that His goodness and righteousness is greater than the toxicity that sin has introduced into His creation.  God’s redemptive plan did not work in isolation from that brokenness, but from within its pain and suffering.  Through the strength God provided, Jesus chose to go to the cross, chose to trust the Father, chose to endure the moment because the future was certain.

Choose the vitamin.  Find the joy!