Impossible

“Earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal,” run the lyrics in the song “Come As You Are.”

We sing it.

Do we really believe that?

Or sing it and then add our buts or limitations, confine it to a certain realm (the spiritual only), or say for others perhaps but not really for me?

Or forget that line when we read the world news?

Yet, that is the Christian faith, isn’t it?

A sin-debt impossibly paid.

A dead man impossibly raised.

An infinite God impossibly in a tiny babe.

Enemies impossibly forgiven.

A holy-holy-holy Holy Spirit impossibly dwelling in us.

A heart of stone impossibly transformed to heart of flesh.

In a world of hate and dog-eat-dog impossible sacrificial love.

In darkness impossible light.

In fear impossible hope.

“I believe that Christ died for me because it is [unbelievable]; I believe that he rose from the dead because it is impossible” as A. W. Tozer cites one of the early church fathers (1).

Faith—we believe the unbelievable.

Faith—we hope for the impossible promises of God.

Our whole faith is based on the “absurd”—because “absurd” is the “normal” in the fallen world. God’s ways are the reality that will break in.

Nor can we contain the sorrow that heaven can’t heal. Yes, we live in the not-yet, but let us not forget the already. When the veil was torn as Jesus died, the presence of God poured forth into an unholy, broken world. No longer was the presence contained in a mere box behind a curtain but showered forth. And in the presence of God there is physical healing, light, miracles of justice in the court systems, financial needs secretly met, flour and oil and loaves and fishes that don’t run out, legs and joints and sinews that get reknit, cancer that disappears, emotional wounds that find wholeness, relationships restored. Physical, spiritual, emotional, material—there is no sorrow that heaven cannot heal as the presence of God in his Spirit and in his church goes forth.

There is the not-yet, but even in the not-yet we find healing in the waiting. Impossible joy in the journey. Impossible perseverance in the pain. Impossible hope in the hurt. Impossible friendships in the failures and forgiveness. Impossible silence of shame. Impossible courage in catastrophe. Because the presence of God is with us. Impossible jubilee in the injustice. Heaven is here among his people breaking out. Heaven is here in the Spirit dwelling in us.

So we sing the impossible: “Earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal.”

We in belief believe the impossible: “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit…. On the third day he rose again…… I believe in…. the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting” (The Apostles Creed). When we begin taking the creeds, confessions, and catechisms of the church as a ho-hum believable, we lose our wonder at our great God. We lose the fact that impossibilities happen today, now, in our lives. That earth truly has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal.

For your impossibilities, your sorrows, may God bring his presence and heal.

NOTE

(1) A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco, CA: Harper One, 1961), 19.