The Gift Nobody Wants

"God loves not the believer who does the most, nor who feels the most, nor who thinks the most cleverly and best, nor even the one who shows the greatest love, but He loves him who suffers most" - Michael Molinos

We have almost lost the meaning in the west of what it means to be a persecuted church and to see our brothers and sisters die a martyrs death.  This was the early Christian vocabulary of what it meant to be a Christian.  In American Christianity, suffering and pain are to be avoided at all costs.  Self-help books and the gospel of feeling good and God wants you happy are the norm in most Christian bookstores.  The truth is suffering is a gift from God but it is often a gift that nobody wants.

 Maybe if we are ever going to get to the place of being ready for physical martyrdom, we need to learn "spiritual martyrdom."  This is the soul that has gone so deep into the Spirit of God where one has removed all attachments to the world and is so full of God's Spirit that exterior things do not really upset you.  God brings us to such a humble, quiet and peaceful place that nothing hardly disturbs you any more.

When God takes someone through this painful process, God will even remove the very resources of the Spirit that gives you peace and strength.  God strips and leaves you with nothing except God alone in the dark.  When God is all we have, we realize all the other things are simply surface things to the reality of God in our lives.  There is a wonderful parable by Meister Eckhart which later I will give in its more complete form.  I will just say for now that the parable ends with a poor crippled man who would rather be in hell with God than in heaven without God.  Now that is heaven on earth with God who is our all and all and our end of all.