Lent week 2 – Hope, Anger and Courage Reflections

Hi friends,
 
I have been doing bible study for a few weeks now and we have started our Lenten Studies. We are working from this lovely book called “Grace to You” Lenten Reflections for individuals and groups. It is actually Roman Catholic and written and published in Australia. However our Anglican church is using it
 
With only two weeks been completed there are things that really pop out to me, and I would imagine it would for you guys too. So I thought I would share it with you all and also my reaction to the readings. I don’t intend to offend anyone with my beliefs or reactions, if for some reason you are please delete if you received this via email or untag yourself from this facebook note. I hope my reactions help spark your own and help you through your own troubles.
 
First off was a reflection on Psalm 115 (15-19)
 
The first two lines jumped out at me!!
 
I trusted, even when I said:
‘I am sorely afflicted’.
 
I took this as a message that I do need to hang in there and trust the Lord during my battles with pain/illness. Like he is saying ‘breathe Mel, have some faith in me’. Kind of like how in the Gospels, Jesus is forever asking why his disciples doubt him and to have some faith.
 
I know many of you are battling health troubles right now, most of the time our CRPS/RSD doesn’t give us a breather and it feels as though we are always battling and this wears us down and eats at our soul. It is so hard to keep faith amidst such adversity, but we can always challenge these things that eat at our soul and become more aware of God’s love for us and regaining our faith in him.
 
Sorry but I can’t manage to type the rest of the Psalm, but you should be able to google it or look it up if you have a hard copy (personal reflection: Thank You to the St Alban’s Parish of Muswellbrook for providing all the material I need for my Bible Studies and personal faith pursuits).
 
The next point of interest is the Scripture reflection.
 
Part of Paul’s wonderful hymn of hope in chapter 8 of Romans.
With God on our side, no adversary or opposition should frighten us.
 
We should seek our strength through him.
 
St Augustine once said that:
Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names
are anger and courage: anger at the way things are,
and courage to make them the way they ought to be.
 
Straight away I clicked here. Others in the group were reluctant to use the word Anger and thought it was too strong of an emotion. But I think anger suits just fine. If it is something that really affects you then it will make you angry to some degree. Anger is useless unless it brings about change, and it takes courage to make change happen.
 
Unresolved anger is especially damaging to us who have CRPS/RSD. Speaking from experience (Insurance disputes and when a couple of doctors and now lost friends questioned my honesty)……. it puts a lot of stress on our bodies and it needs to be resolved for us to recover. It takes great courage! Change needs to happen, whether it is in our thinking/ interpretation of the situation or through actual resolution. The whole time the only thing that kept me alive was I had faith in Jesus that he was going to stick with me because I was faithful and truthful. I actually had a dream before this came to light for me. I was amidst the turmoil of being falsely accused the night I had the dream. In the dream a statue of Jesus came to life, he looked at me and touched me, his face full of sadness, he did not speak, he didn’t have to……a sense of calm came over me like when someone acknowledges your problem 100% and like the saying a problem shared is a problem halved. But also from his face there was the suggestion of hope, that things are going to work out in the end, because I am faithful and truthful. He turns back into a statue and for a moment I look around at the people who are busy doing other things to see “was that for real”? Everyone appears to be busy with what they are doing, and I humbly ask myself was that message really for me, did that really happen to me! and then I woke….
 
Now I see the dream as a sign to me to keep going and my faith grew after having that dream. I know this may appear spooky to some and others may think it is just a coincidence, perhaps my brain was smart enough subconsciously to find a way to reduce the stress hormones that were making my CRPS/RSD very worse, that is spooky too if you think about it (humour). Whatever it is and I am open to however and whatever caused this to occur, but it still stands believing it helped me, and without it I would have given up on life.
 
Moving on………………….. I’m exhausted  
 
Taken from “Grace to You” page 24.
 
Hope is not wishful thinking or fanciful day dreaming – that is simply optimism.
Hope is based on the conviction that whatever the misery and gloom facing us and presented in television news services each day, our-all powerful and all-loving God is still in charge of the world and promises to be always and everywhere faithful.
 
Straight away I am reflecting on the bushfires with this one and even the Asian Tsunami of 2004. We have defeated the misery and gloom through the many hundreds of thousands of people who have reached into their pockets, given up their time or given up possessions to help rebuild the survivors lives. It reaches many many people and people who probably take things for granted. It is a wake up call for those fixated on things like materialism. We all follow Jesus’ word in the Gospels most without knowing it, we are giving up our possessions (including money) to the less fortunate as Jesus said we should do. We are restoring hope to lives who are embedded with misery, just as Jesus intended. In the end although lives are lost, ‘all shall be well’ because God is at work bringing out our love and compassion and it will defeat the adversity put before us.
 
Us people with CRPS/RSD and other diseases and especially those at this present time who are having illness symptoms under investigation for other causes (yes not just myself) there is hope no matter what the outcome. It may open the doors for successful treatment of the symptoms, it may open the doors for more medical research and also arm our practitioners with more knowledge to help the next person. I know hope can be the furthest thing from our minds when we are being incinerated, stabbed repeatedly and or crushed (implying a picture to the physical pain) or any other bothering symptom. Sometimes we pin our hopes on flare ups not lasting too long, and when they do last, we lose sight of our hope. Where can we look to restore our hope? Firstly what about the first thing we learn in pain management, our pain serves no purpose, it is not suggestive of physical harm to our body unlike in a normal persons body. If we draw on this when our pain is at its worst we can have peace of mind that “all shall be well” and have hope our that pain eases enough for us to think straight  and with logical reason. Those of us who have troubling neurological symptoms along with our pain hope that they will ease through treatment or on their own, or that we develop the skills to cope with them in our daily lives.
 
Note: I think it is important that I am not implying God did this to us to teach us a lesson, I am not a fundamentalist christian. Nor that we are afflicted with illnesses because we are sinners……… I find fundamentalism damaging. That is just my view, I don’t wish to offend anyone with my opinions/beliefs.