Squeezing the Life Out of It

                                                    Squeezing the Life Out of It


People feel squeezed this time of year around here. It may be everywhere but I know the circle of my knowing often feels they have been caught by a boa constrictor.

What's squeezing everybody? The usual pythons of money, family, time pressures, expectations- both and  real and unreal- plus the ongoing search for meaning in this messy world. It seems that right after Christmas, folks have to pay their real estate taxes, a new set of tires is needed, the water heater breaks, the truck dies, and the furnace goes out--all these literally happening within a half mile of my front door.

And if it is not breaking things needing the attention of money then it is something else out-of-balance and whomperjawed (a west Texas term). Maybe someone's kids made it through Christmas but they and you knew their marriage was in trouble and they split. Your heart breaks and is squeezed. Now someone else has kids whose marriage is okay but their kids started back to school after the Christmas holiday and have gotten the flu. "Could you come and stay with them so we can go to work?" Translated: would you bring yourselves over to catch the flu for us so we can take care of those bills squeezing us in paragraph two? You don't want to get the flu but you go, it's grand kids.  Some kids move home, borrow money or just struggle and their squeezing squeezes you. Other people are being squeezed by other health issues from arthritis to knee replacement to valve replacement to cedar fever to cancer treatments. They feel with every breath their life is squeezed out a little more as the snake tightens its' grip with every exhalation. How am I going to get the next breath?

And frankly, God seems to sit there and let the squeezing go on and on 'til you can hardly breathe. I can't know all the whys and wherefores of pain and squeezings, and I hate cutesy little sayings like 'when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.' Really, in light of the tremendous pain, suffering and honest questions of God and life we give that kind of answer? Tip-toe up to the bed  of a cancer patient burning with chemo induced fever or chills and tell them that. No, I don't pretend to know all the answers. But I have seen some amazing things from God's children being squeezed. They get the Life squeezed out of them.

Because all along God hasn't just been sitting there doing nothing. He has been working from the moment He was invited into your heart to put into your life all the character and qualities of a child of the King. Now this doesn't change the pain of being squeezed, it doesn't dismiss the hell that you or loved ones feel,  but may I ask a question: what comes out of you when you are squeezed? The answer is whatever has been put in or allowed in. At squeezing time, attitudes come out we wish weren't there. At other times anger, selfishness, manipulation and a host of unChrist-like junk leaks out. But as a person submits to His Lordship, learns to trust, leans into Jesus to walk and learn, a wonderful thing begins to happen over the course of living life. No, the squeezing doesn't stop but as life squeezes Life come out. I have seen joy come out of the squeezing of trials. I have seen forgiveness come out of a life squeezed by betrayal. I have watched anger and bitterness squeeze a life, a marriage, a wandering child and love ooze out like a balm to soothe, comfort, and heal. This may not make the pressure easy, but it lends to it a meaning, a dignity, a purpose. The Apostle Paul tackled the issue in II Corinthians 4:7-18, keeping his eyes on an eternal glory that far out weighed the weight of squeezing.

I picture Jesus on the cross, His very life being squeezed out of Him but there issues from Him not just drops of physical blood but the forgiving, healing and loving drops of grace. It's what was in Him.
What does your world around you get when life squeezes you?  What is there will be revealed--when the pressure comes, let them see Jesus.

Cos