Well, she was right and wrong. As any of my parishioners could tell you, certainly anyone who had been through one of my Adult Confirmation classes, I would use my mother’s ability to ignore my whining as if I wasn’t speaking at all as an illustration. It truly was amazing to me. My mother could stand at the sink washing dishes and apparently not here a word I was whining about. I used this tactic of my mother’s to illustrate how God, because He is all knowing, here’s audibly every prayer ever prayed by anyone, but outside of Christ He hears them as my mother “heard” my whining. This did teach me not to whine, but there was still a more amazing thing she taught.
I was my mother’s undisputed favorite. Go ahead and ask my three siblings. They would all admit that fact. This being the case it was surprising when my mother turned on me one day when I was 10 or 11 and said in a sharp tone, “God did not put me on Earth to hear your complaints.”
Startled as if by a slap, I went on to contemplate this for years, for decades. It wasn’t till singing on Easter maybe 30 years ago that the true marvel of what my mother had said came through. Indeed, she was not put on Earth to hear my complaints. Someone else was. That Person was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. True God begotten of the Father from eternity and also true man born of the Virgin Mary.
This One was sent to Earth to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. The One was innocent of everything we have ever said, did, or thought wrong but was punished as if He had done them all. This One was not beaten, tortured, or whipped to an inch of His life; He wasn’t beaten half to death. Oh no, holy Jesus meek and mild wasn’t even beaten just to death. No! He was beaten, tortured, and whipped to hell. This is the One who was put on Earth to hear my complaints!
Well, that’s what we sing in verse 4 of “I Know that My Redeemer Lives”. We sing in part “He lives to comfort me when faint/ He lives to hear my soul’s complaint.” Doesn’t that just blow you away? After bearing all the wrath of God against the world’s sins, Jesus, having satisfied that wrath by his hellish death, rises to life again on the third day to hear my soul’s complaint?
I know what you’re thinking. While people’s faith may be expressed in there hymns and prayers, it doesn’t mean that their faith is Biblical or Confessional. But wonder of wonders this amazing stanza of that beloved hymn is rock solid Scriptural.
Read David’s Psalm 55 versus 17 and 18: “Evening and morning and at noon, I will complain and murmur, And He will hear my voice. He will redeem my soul in peace from the battle which is against me, For they are many who strive with me” (NASB77). It would seem that the only time our Lord Jesus is not hearing our complaints is when we are sleeping. That’s convenient because too my shame and as testimony of my ongoing sinfulness and need for forgiving, that’s the only time I’m not complaining.
