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As
Jesus drew near, he saw the
city and wept over it, saying, “If this day you only knew what
makes for
peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. For
the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade
against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your
children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another
within you
because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”
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“Life
is like a mean machine,” Rob Thomas sings, “it made
a mess outta me. It left me caught
between; like an angry dream I was stranded. And I’m steady
but I’m starting to shake, and I don’t know how much more
I can take. This is it now. Everybody get down; this is all I
can
take. This is how a heart breaks. You take a hit now, you feel it
break down,
make you stay wide away. This is how a
heart breaks.” The song is without hope—“never get
what I want,” he
sings. Too often, pain destroys the good feelings of life.
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"Life
is a mean machine." Rob Thomas describes
a romantic breakup in those words. In
Jesus’ mind, similar words could describe the pain of the
inhabitants of
Jesus knew about pain. He would not only have to suffer himself, but he knew that others would suffer. For Jesus, however, pain was not the end of anything. It was more of a means to understand some things in life. He could foretell what was going to happen to In a similar way, the person in Rob Thomas’ song, “This Is How A Heart Breaks,” might recognize that he himself partially caused the breakup. Pain usually points to something else. Pain in the body means that something is not working correctly; pain in the mind means that something has not gone the way we think it should have gone. Our task is to understand the pain, answering questions like "what is it teaching me," "what should I do to make things better," and the like. Life really is not a mean machine. It just feels like it sometimes, and the good news is that we can learn from it. |
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THOUGHT
What causes the most
pain in the
world?
PRAYER Good and gracious God, there is
pain in our lives. We know it because we
feel it, both physically and mentally. Help us understand that the pain
usually is saying something to us,
telling us how to behave better or how to improve our
lives. Be with us, we pray.
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©2007 Capuchin
Province of Mid-America
Fr. Mike Scully is a member of the Capuchin Province of Mid-America |
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