More Than I Can Bear

 The other day I heard an ancient old song from 1997… “He'll never put more on me than I can bear…” 

Good old Kirk Franklin. I loved that song. I always found it comforting. 

It still is, but it was a bittersweet moment decades later to realize I don’t believe it anymore, not quite the way I used to. 

Pixabay: Pexels

My teenage brain heard, “God will protect me from hardships that are too painful to manage.”  

Now? I have to admit the God I’d asked to guide my life, the God I’d prayed, “Thy Kingdom come…” to, was not who I thought He was. He tested me, pushed me, shook me. He let me be disappointed in circumstances, people, and myself. He let me lose sweet dreams that felt like pulling teeth, good teeth. He let me grieve and be changed in profound ways I didn't want to. He let me wrestle with obstacles that seemed deviously placed to prevent me from doing what so clearly seemed to be His will. 

“He’ll never put more on me…?”

Really?

What is all this then, Kirk? What is it?

My difficulties might be milder than a lot of other people’s, but there were times it was more than I could bear. If I dwell on those events (even if some complications were my own doing), that old promise could ring hollow.

Note to teenage me: God’s promises are not valid if you twist them to feed an idealistic vison of what you hope your life to be. His promises are valid in confusion, chaos, and loss. His Word carries more clout in your heart when you’re grasping it by faith, than when you find it manageable by your own intellect and strength. God’s power is more dynamic, more incredible, and more amazing than simply shielding you from pain. 

If I could change one word of that song, it would be: 

He’ll never put more on me than HE can bear. 

While God was doing all that letting, He was also doing the heavy lifting. He bore with me, directly or through the love of His people, all the weight that I couldn’t carry. Maybe I thought it was all on me, but it never was.  

Just when I think I’ve lost the plot, He always keeps authoring.  

He carries us where He allowed unfixable weakness. 

He creates new life where He allowed a void.  

He resurrects new hope where He allowed old dreams to die.

He solidifies Truth where He allowed our beliefs to be shaken. 

He provides strangely specific comforts where He allowed unthinkable hurt. 

Pixabay: Ramykabalan

To borrow a defining statement from theologian Matthew Tan, “The rending of our expectations and plans and the experience of disappointment are therefore, not the limits of the king’s reign. They are doorways through which the king enters to claim his dominion.”

The rending, as in “broken into pieces,” just like the song. Overwhelmed. Facing a brick wall. Unmovable. The End. Sometimes we are truly locked into a painful storyline that won’t resolve in this lifetime. We suffer, as Paul Linnman might emphasize, “…beyond all believable bounds.” 

Why? Why? Why? 

We’re allowed to ask, because to question our disappointments isn’t to question God. God doesn’t author our confusion. He answers it. He isn’t put off by our disorientation. He understands our dismay when life becomes the pulsating definition of more than we can bear. 

We break. There’s no need to pretend otherwise when it happens to us, because God doesn’t see our brokenness as an ending. He sees a beginning. His power keeps flowing and filling the ever-shifting spaces of our life.

As a creator, He keeps creating.

As a father, He keeps caring.

As a storyteller, He keeps plotting.

As a teacher, He keeps teaching.

As a savior, He keeps saving.

He approaches our grief offering beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, and a spirit of praise for heaviness (Isa. 61:3). Yes, He allowed the fires that charred the ashes and He allowed the losses that carved the grief. Yes, He allows our power to reduce into powder. He allows us more than we can bear. When we can’t understand, He calls us to evolve our definition of a limitation and to trust the unknowable height of His thoughts, and the endless might of His sovereignty. When we reach to Him for orientation, He proves – every time -- how personal, powerful, creative, and loving He really is. Impossible or not, He builds His kingdom at the very center of our nothingness. 

The confusion of the unbearable can render us not just hurting, but stunned, blind, grappling, and waiting. As the Apostle Paul knew well, sometimes our blindness is caused not by darkness, but by immense light. Sometimes the workings of God are greater than we can handle, or imagine, or begin to process in a moment, or even a year. We tell ourselves, I know what a doorway is, and this isn’t it. And no matter how confident we are in our own knowledge, God still sees a doorway.

If you’re in that state, the one thing I can promise you is this: He is near. He never fails to walk through the door. He never fails to build His Kingdom where He’s welcomed. He never fails to bear with us what we cannot on our own.

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…”

(Isa. 53:4 ESV).