Our Cup of Sorrow

(Overcomer Wu)

"Shall I refuse to drink the cup of sorrow which the Father has given me to drink?" John 18:11

I always admire a great piece of art with great details such as those of cobblestones and bricks of a wall or of a street painstakingly incorporated into a nice painting. God takes a thousand times more pain with us than the artist with his picture, by many touches of sorrow, and by many colors of circumstances, to conform us into the form which is the highest and noblest in His sight, the image of Christ. But we need to receive His gifts of myrrh (symbolic of the suffering of the cross among other things) in the right spirit to benefit from them. Myrrh was also one of the gifts given to the Lord Jesus at His birth (Matt 2:11) and it was the last drink offered to the Lord at the end of His life (Mk 15:23). Indeed, the Lord Jesus was “a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa 53:3) all through His life. Should our life as His disciples be any different?

Indeed it is extremely doubtful if a soul can really know the full breath, length, height, and depth of the love of God and in its satisfying fullness until the skies are black and it seems that no glimmer of hope is in sight.

I believe it was A.B. Simpson who wrote:

"Pressed out of measure and pressed to all length;

Pressed so intensely it seems, beyond strength;

Pressed in the body and pressed in the soul,

Pressed in the mind till dark surges roll.

Pressure by foes, and pressure from friends.

Pressure on pressure, till life nearly ends.

Pressed into knowing no helper but God;

Pressed into loving the staff and the rod.

Pressed into liberty where nothing clings;

Pressed into faith for impossible things. ..."

Yes, we often praise the Lord for drinking the cup of God's wrath and bringing us the cup of blessings. Surely, the Lord Jesus did that and much more. Yet the trials and sufferings that we speak of are not those relating to God's wrath, but more of the sufferings our of the natural order of things in this cursed world and sufferings allowed by God for our perfection. In this regards, the Lord Jesus even told His two inner-circle disciples, James and John, that the cup (referring to His suffering) that he drinks they shall drink also in Matthew 20:23. Trials and hard places are needed to press us forward, even as the furnace fires in the chamber of that mighty ship give force that moves the piston, drives the engines, and propels that great vessel across the sea in the face of the winds and waves.

"Out of the presses of pain,

Cometh the soul's best wine;

And the eyes that have shed no rain,

Can shed but little shine."

However, we can be encouraged like the apostle Paul who uttered these words from his own experience:

“We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.” (2 Cor 4:8-10).