Searching for life amidst the Fellowship of Suffering

When I wrote about searching for life and the Three Big Brothers & the Little Sister last month, I knew the Lord had more to teach me…

And when I found this old photo of the kitten that had comforted me thru my growing up years, I knew the Lord had more to draw from my heart …

As I looked at that photo from 60 years ago, the comfort from that small kitten felt fresh in my arms again. Her name was Alice, and she almost didn’t make it. Having come thru a difficult birth, she was destined to be buried until my middle brother (the one who loved all the animals) decided to practice his newly learned CPR from highschool biology on her little chest. Amazingly, she began to breathe again! He brought her in to show me, and she became my comfort after my older brother left for college.

Life after death … God stepping in to change the days of one little girl …

And a picture of intercession began to shape my life from that moment on. Eventually both older brothers moved away and got married. During my teen years I spent weeks each summer staying with both of them. And I spent years praying for the youngest brother, who walked a prodigal path.

We all had grown up watching our Mom move from one sickness to another,  needing our care in so many ways.

“I will never be like that! I will stay strong, and serve others with my strength!” … It was a thought the three of us  harbored in our hearts. Even if no one else knew it, we knew it.

But we also had grown up under her watchful prayers. In her Bible she marked passage after passage with specific family members’ names that she had prayed over. A gift of intercession from within the weakest of places had been lived out on our behalf.

In his last years, my middle brother fought a long battle with cancer and lost that very strength he had so loved. His gift of loving and praying still lingers in my mind 20 years later.

My oldest brother spent the last months of his life so weakened and changed. He would call me and say, Oh how the Lord has humbled me! But oh how good that humbling is!

Both brothers lived out a life of intercession and prayer as their last months were so filled with God’s love for those around them.

But my youngest brother found that the love of Jesus had followed him all his years, meeting him at his lowest point. His last days were marked with a humility so grateful for mercy.

The day after my oldest brother died last month, I thought I was having yet another medication reaction. My heart felt like a trainwreck hit my chest and began beating chaotically, from the low 60s to the high 170s. When we finally saw the cardiologist 5 days later, it was no medication reaction this time. No, the EKG showed that my heart was in Afib. The tears were close to the surface as I listened to the Doctor’s instructions. All I could think  about was my oldest brother who had lived with severe heart disease for years. Then I remembered his last words that I heard over the phone two days before he died, as he prayed for me: “Lord my sister needs a miracle.”

The Doctor quickly rushed me to the hallway and handed me a pill and a small cup of water. He said to take the blood thinner immediately because the risk of stroke from blood clots is extremely high with untreated aFib. The tears kept brimming to the surface as I felt my brother’s prayers being answered.

We added 3 new prescriptions to my list of meds, and scheduled the next appointment for one month, hoping for the aFib to calm down. After I took the pill and drank the water the Doctor handed me, I gave the cup to my husband to hold while I signed paperwork. Everything seemed to blur around me as I kept thinking of my brother. My husband handed the cup back to me so I could toss it, but his words caused the tears to flow unchecked this time:

“Take the cup.”

The words echoed through time, the cup of the fellowship of Christ, the cup of knowing Him in His suffering and in the power of His resurrection…

And this, so that I may know Him [experientially, becoming more thoroughly acquainted with Him, understanding the remarkable wonders of His Person more completely] and [in that same way experience] the power of His resurrection [which overflows and is active in believers], and [that I may share] the fellowship of His sufferings, by being continually conformed [inwardly into His likeness even] to His death [dying as He did]

—Philippians 3:10 Amp

Jesus was willing to bear the cup of suffering for our sake, that we might know HIM

Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”

—John 18:11 NIVh

And He asks me to be willing to bear up under suffering that I might join with Him in living out this life of mercy and grace, clinging to the promises of His power of resurrection.

Somehow the gift of hidden intercession, being willing to bear the cup of suffering for the sake of Christ’s mercy, had become a shared gift through my family. The humility of weakness carried to the feet of Jesus, brought a mercy to prayers that went deeper than I would have known otherwise.

So as I approach a new procedure this week, for an illness I did not expect, I am laying my own weakness at His feet again. This Transesophogeal Echo (TEE), followed by an electric shock to reset my heart’s normal rhythm (Cardioversion) may seem scary to me. Yet when Jesus asks me to take up the cup of suffering at HIS side, how can I refuse? My prayers for His mercy to flow through my physical heart, will join with my prayers for His mercy to flow through to those He has placed on my spiritual heart. He joins the prayers of His saints and they waft before the throne of Heaven.

And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.

—Revelation 5:8 NIV

Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand

—Revelation 8:3-4 NIV