If your familiar with the writer, I'm sure your thinking that that comment is quite an understatement. If you have no idea who I'm talking about then I encourage you to go pick up this book, it will be a great introduction to a writer and thinker that has influenced countless with his works. But as I was saying, C.S. Lewis was on to something. The man who dreamed in lions, witches, and wardrobes, had a way about his writing that expressed the deepest of human thoughts and ideas in the most simple terms and phrases. Since reading Mere Christianity during my sophomore year in college, I've been fascinated by the writer. In fact, several years ago I picked up A Year with C.S. Lewis, a devotional journal with exerts from Lewis' works, and I was reading it the other day. The exert was from The Problem of Pain, a book which I am familiar with but have not read. In this particular passage, Lewis references a verse in Hebrews 2, which after looking up the reference caught my attention:
"For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." - Hebrews 2:10 NKJV
I have never served in the military, but I have played enough sports to know what the role of someone with the title captain. Ultimately, they're a leader with followers. They provide help and direction for their followers, often serving with or even along side them, and most often bear the brunt of responsibility for any given situation. The author of Hebrews is talking here about Jesus Christ, saying that God the Father, allowed and made God the Son, Jesus, to be the captain of salvation through suffering, that is Christ's torture and then death on the cross. Other translations of the Bible use the phrase "author of salvation," or even the word "pioneer." But at that moment in my living room, the idea of Jesus as the captain of our salvation through pain struck the right cord with me.
A few weeks ago my cousin's husband was murdered. Our whole family is still trying to wrap our minds around the senselessness of such a violent act. We've dealt with our share of death and pain, but nothing like this. My cousin's husband was about the nicest guy you could ever expect to meet. Honestly, if the guy had ever known how to be selfish, he'd forgotten how long before I'd met him. He was a welcome addition to the family, and to me and my siblings, he was more like a brother-in-law, than just a guy who married our cousin. He was a Christian which means he is in Heaven, and that seems like the only thing that in this whole situation that makes any sense at all. It has been a painful thing.
But in the midst of me crying out to the Lord, looking for answers for all this heartache and suffering that my family was dealing with, the Lord reminded me that the Father knew what it was like to loose His Son, a pain and sorrow that I imagine was infinitely greater than my own. And in my own sadness, that thought brought me great comfort, knowing that the Lord was hurting about this too. What God made His Son go through for us, is nothing less than amazing, and the thought that in a redemptive act, Jesus became the author and captain of salvation through such pain, is no less astounding. But even as I mourn in the loss of a loved one, I am encouraged knowing that the Lord is not indifferent to such pain, and I believe hurts along side us even as He leads us.
- Chuck
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