December 4, 2014December 5, 2014 Peter Witkowski Christmas, Pain & Suffering

When Thanksgiving is Depressing

My heart was pained. Ironically enough, the cause of my anxiousness was an event devoted to the theme of thanksgiving. As I sat through three cycles of videos, testimonies, and songs, my heart sank deeper and deeper into despair.

I heard various Christians talk about the Jesus who gave grandparents great families, who gave widowers new spouses, and who made sick children new. But the Jesus who wept over his friend’s death, who suffered on the cross, and who ordained for the apostle Paul to be tortured, robbed, and shipwrecked was nowhere to be found during this holiday.

Moreover, the God who comforts the daughter who buries her father and her mother within a blink of each other was not mentioned. The God who promises to vindicate the abused child was overlooked. And the God who sustains parents as they place their newborn under a tombstone was omitted. In his place, I was offered a Jesus who looked remarkably like the genie from Aladdin (minus the blue skin and red sash). Rub the bottle; say the magic prayer; and poof, your best life now.

I was grieved because this shrunken view of God does injustice to both the gospel and our savior that I have come to love. If our boasts about God are always linked to material gains and physical health, we’ve missed out on the greatest benefits of the gospel. The beauty of the gospel is best seen when health, wealth, and physical happiness our ripped from our arms.The awesomeness of the gospel is having nothing and discovering joyful reality that God is everything. As Christians, we don’t have to brush our suffering under the rug, assuming we lack the faith of the super spiritual and hoping that our next year will be magically better. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

As we slide out from the Thanksgiving table into the Christmas season, we should thank God for our families, our health, and for everything and cross_jesus_wood_236183 anything that contributes to our happiness. All good gifts come from above! But we also must realize that the beauty of the Jesus does not end with the safe and serene pictures of the Christ child lying in a designer manger surrounded by non-smelly animals. Our savior went onto the bloody agony of the cross. And as he did, Jesus both experienced our pain and then defeated its source. Through his life, death, and resurrection, Christ offers hope, joy, and peace to the grieving daughter, the hurt child, and the heartbroken parents. Jesus offers us an eternal life that transcends our earthly trappings whether good or bad. Our greatest gain is not a great family portrait placed on fireplace mantel. It’s Christ! Him, we can never lose!

As we prepare to celebrate the holidays listed on our calendars, we should not assume that our churches exist to demonstrate the end of suffering. We exist to show world that Jesus triumphs over suffering through the cross! And when the unfathomably huge God of the Bible is proclaimed, I cannot help but be thankful!

October 9, 2014October 14, 2020 Peter Witkowski Pain & Suffering, Parenting

Going Home After The Terrible, Horrible, no Good, Very Bad Day

It was as the children’s book by Judith Viorst says, “A Terrible, Horrible, no Good, Very Bad Day.” My correctional unit which typically only restrained a child three to five times a year had just finished disarming its fifth kid. After deescalating the grounded Axel, the attending physician ordered the staff to restrain the youth for his own safety. Exhausted, I sat down in the faded plastic chair that was the cinderblock room only furnishing. As I sat watched Alex, he broke the silence.

Straining against the gurney’s straps, the youth tosses out a few choice phrases and then triumphantly said, “I bet you wish you were me!”

Intrigued by the insanity of the question, I engaged the conversation and asked him “Why do you say that?”

He then provided a rather honest assessment of how all of the staff had suffered through the day.

“True,” I responded. “Today, has been a really bad day. But here is what you don’t understand. This is your life. It is not mine. I’m going home at 5 PM.”

We don’t have to be a ward of the state or named Alexander or to have a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” We simply have to live. Every day, most of us wrestle with sleep deprivation, sickness, busy schedules, relationship struggles, bad work environments or unruly children. We also wonder if we’ve ruined or our kids by being too attached to our schedules or if we warped them by being too relaxed. And then we move from the hypothetical sorrows to the real grief when we learn that a loved one has died. At times, the life is terrible.

But regardless of how many terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days we have had, we are going home! This is why as Christian, we can continue to love our children when they wake up at 3:00 AM. This is why we can still care our children when they abandon the church and say hateful things. And this is why we can get up the morning after we bury a loved one.

If we have embraced Christ, we have a home laid up for us in heaven (Col 1:5). We have a promise of hope and joy that surpasses all earthly suffering. When we cling to this hope, we can look at our bad days and say with Paul, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us”(Rom. 8:18). Until then, we can love both the loveable and unlovable because we have been loved by our heavenly father who promises us eternity. He will get us through the day. If you are having a very terrible horrible, no good, very bad day, remember, “You are going home!” Five o’clock is coming!

July 16, 2014July 16, 2024 Peter Witkowski Babies and Birth, Pain & Suffering

What Do We Say?

Eleven years ago, today amidst a swirl of both joyful and frightful confusion, our first-born son – Peter Alexander Witkowski (Second Peter) – was born in the early morning hours. About 4 hours later, he abandoned his earthly body for the loving embrace of Jesus. As the days between Second Peter’s birth and death continue to grow, the truths that comforted my heart at his funeral continue to resound in my soul. I still have a jellybean size hole in my heart which now knows the deeper pain of associate with the loss of my dear April, Peter’s mother. But God’s goodness, love, and comfort still far exceed the depths of my great sorrow. Our savior dries our tears, holds our hearts, and remembers our prayers. He blessed us with our second son, Luke Alexander Witkowski and with two beautiful little girls. God is faithful! Today as I celebrate Second Peter’s life, I affirm with an ever-increasing realization that, “To live is Christ!” Below are the words I spoke at his funeral which remains our hope for today. (7.18.24)

What Do We Say:

34. April and Peter holding 2nd Peter shorty after 100 pm.

The fleeting dance of poetry, the smooth elegancy of prose, and the most insightful uses of language all seem inadequate, trite, trivial, and unworthy of expressing what has occurred. On Tuesday morning after a sleepless night, April and I welcomed our precious little baby boy with trembling souls; our souls broke into happy smiles as we heard Peter Alexander’s heart beat firmly and his lunges taste the softness of the air. And then as if heaven itself had fallen, we flew calmly back to Second Peter’s tiny plastic bed to love him with unending passion. After an eternity that had been shrunken into four vaporous hours, we softly and slowly kissed his cool little forehead one last time. And now we follow his body to this somber chamber. So what do you say to these things? What do you say when your son of promise is born at 9:08am and then dies in your arms at 2:49pm?

“To live is Christ, to die is gain (Phil. 1:21.)”

When Second Peter died, he gained. April and I pleaded for his life, and God saw fit to give him eternal life. Our First Born Son is glorified. He knows fully the joy of Christ. He bounces playful to heavenly music. He gets to play with David, Samson, April’s Papa, and my own dear Grandfather, whom I never meet. He is the coolest little child that I’ve ever known. To die is gain!

For April and I, “To live is Christ.” We have and will continue to shed tears for Second Peter. And I know that both of our hearts will always have a jellybean size hole that will never be covered. Yet we will go on living, serving, and ministering because we have a savior who is a perfect high priest. Our hope lies in the life of another son who once lost his life alone on a cross to conquer death by rising again. For this we live, looking forward, as David did to going, to being with our precious son (2 Samuel 12:23). To live is Christ.