Rejoice In Them All

 “Seems to me, other than all things eternal, the only promised things in scripture are suffering and presence.” Our dogs were gentle and patient to no end. When they got in a fight though…You could lose an arm or a leg trying to break it up. Bruno, the younger Samoyed would step out of the round gladly but Sam was in it for dominance and blood. There was no letting go. This quote from E. Brown has had its’ teeth in me the same way.

Is it that black and white? My initial visceral reaction was to dismiss it as too simplistic. What about joy? What about peace? No, they don’t occur in a vacuum. They are a result of presence. This concept of presence persisted. His presence means we have immediate access to the ear of God; for worship and for lament. “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth.”

“In this world you will have trouble and suffering.” Jesus guarantees it. That quote comes at the end of a stream of scripture assuring deep-in-the-soul peace to His followers. That peace comes in the person of the Holy Spirit as a result of Christ’s overcoming the world.

So what’s niggling at me? Is it the Hound of Heaven (a nickname for the Holy Spirit) stirring me? Here it is. What about love? Or that perfect wine and cheese pairing you had last weekend? The music group that brought you to tears yesterday; what about that?

My answer has to do with the Ecclesiastes and Chestertonian mindset I’ve been soaking in this last year. “We want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening…. We should not be affected by the fact that there are more dragons than princesses.” Delight in the fruit of your labor, worship God the creator, enjoy the friends of your youth. Even in seasons of deep suffering these may lighten the load. “Indeed, if a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many.”

        Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash

This Knowing Is Enough

I woke up from the dream in a sweat,  With the knowledge of evil and good  I looked at my own silhouette - it looked back with a bad attitude  You reached out to touch me  You reached out to touch me - I said it's too true:  You and me we know too much---Mark Heard, “We Know Too Much.”

 Some saints suffer greatly.  I read their stories.  For inspiration; for encouragement.  “The most inspiring testimonies are of those who have suffered deeply and found God to be faithful even in the pain,” says Laura Story who has herself suffered deeply.  Deep faith comes through difficult times. This knowing is knowing too much.  

I think too much. In my naivete; when I was even more naive than I am today, I thought God would simply answer prayer and change circumstances.  God would repair the relationship though it was me that was broken.  God would heal here instead of completely healing there.  God would give me a better job instead of chiseling me to fit the present one. 

Hardly holy.  Not character building nor caring. Still at some level I thought it so.  Wished it so. Lately I flip it all around the other way.  I muddle truth thinking God didn’t solve other’s problems (for character of course) and He won’t solve mine. 

My story is different.  My story isn’t the same as their story.  God works heart to heart; person to person, individual to individual.  God is about relationship. God is eternally fellowship, forever three-in-one. This I do know: God will work for fellowship with Him and goodness for me. God may change my circumstances. God may lead me into deep waters. 

This knowing is knowing enough.  Knowing God knows my frame.  Knowing that my story (and yours as well) will be uniquely written.  Knowing I am loved for me.  “But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you…When you pass through the waters I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you, when you walk through the fire you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you.”  This knowing is knowing enough; that I am eternally known.

A Merciful Pathway

“Those who believe in Jesus Christ and are justified by faith and become the children of God are not taken out of this world of woe, but are given the grace to experience the very judgments of God on the human race as the merciful pathway to holiness and heaven rather than sin and hell.”---John Piper

One doesn’t have to look farther than the recent earthquake in China (188 dead, 11,000 injured at last count) to confirm that we live in a world of woe. The sane reaction is to groan, to pray and to give if possible to relief. The other reaction is of course to ignore it and go on living. How we react to tragedy mirrors what is going on inside of us and which highway we are on.

On a smaller scale we deal with those around us that wrestle with significant physical suffering. Certainly we can not understand all the components of the suffering nor fully identify with the ones that suffer. Our challenge is to give of ourselves in ways that feel like death to us that others may live life a little more.

In our day to day dealings with the manifestations of fallenness in others and the brokenness of daily living choosing right responses is incumbent upon us as children of light. There will be many that will take the easy way and respond in kind to unkindness or throw up fist or finger when their cheek is slapped. Travelers on the road to holiness and heaven call on heaven’s strength to respond differently.

The world is a place of woe which we see manifest in so many forms. The saving grace is to remember that we are citizens of heaven. Holiness of heart and character are our goal. Knowing which path we are on will help us know how our heart and hands will respond to this groaning broken place we currently call home.

Trial By Fire

I’ve read enough stories of suffering to know this isn’t unique. In an interview regarding her documentary “Trial by Fire” Megan Smith-Harris said that if given the choice of having had the experience or not all the victims would still choose the experience. Not that they would choose the pain all over again but that the depth of character forged via the trial was worth it.

Joni Eareckson-Tada has said in her testimony that she would rather be in a wheelchair with Jesus than healthy without Him. God has developed in us some bizarre hard-wiring. On the surface we want the life of ease and comfort. Still the conviction expressed in every biography, every good story, is that suffering produces strength of character that doesn’t come from a life lived at leisure.

This truth is difficult for me. I want the big house, the huge garden, the Sunset magazine kitchen and the Bill Gates pocketbook. I am the first to cry to God when hit by hard times. I want my ducks in a row and when God moves them it bugs me. The knowledge that God uses trials to deepen my character and to grow Christ like attitudes in me makes me cringe. It’s the Romans 7 principle. I know what is best for me but my flesh wants to live in comfort and self protection.

I want my cake and Christ’s character. It’s all I can do to recognize the principle and cast my frustrations on God. Mentally I must acknowledge, reckon in the old English, that God’s best for me will come down paths I have no desire to walk. The battle is to always ‘reckon myself dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Or as Peter puts it, “even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ…”

Fragile Circuitry

Most people never hear the timers. The coffee spot I work in has timers that go off to remind us to change out the creamers and coffees so that they stay fresh and at right temperature. As I waited on this customer the timer began beeping. As the beeping grew in pitch and intensity I could see her face grow tight, her eye lids raise and her eyes get more focused. She covered her ears and said seriously with a touch of panic in her voice, “What is that beeping?” She went on to explain that she had a brain injury recently and she has become sensitive to noise.

When I worked as a disability claims manager I had some clients with Lyme disease. They could not function at their jobs because the lights and noises affected them so significantly. Sufferers of Lyme disease also experience tinnitus, inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain (meningitis), temporary paralysis of one side of the face (Bell's palsy), hallucinations and hearing loss.

It is surprising that we live reasonably healthy lives. I could have suffered some serious damage myself having been in a bicycle accident at 16 in which I skid on the pavement for ten feet without a helmet. Beyond that I had fallen off swing sets and out of trees. Despite having blacked out in those accidents I suffer no affects mentally or physically (though some close friends may argue this point).

We take credit for our health. We take vitamins and try and eat right. Scientists tell us this will stave off certain sicknesses and cancers, cancers which science now tells us are carried about in certain genes from birth. Certainly we can sway the statistics but the odds remain significantly against us. It seems obvious that what happens to us physically is out of our control.

There is no guarantee that we can prevent cancer or stop accidents from affecting us. Certainly we can not prevent death. Our only hope is to rest in a certainty that a wholly good God works things out for His glory and our best. Joni Eareckson Tada has stated that, “I relearned the timeless lesson of allowing my suffering to push me deeper into the arms of Jesus. I like to think of my pain as a sheepdog that keeps snapping at my heels to drive me down the road to Calvary, where, otherwise, I would not be naturally inclined to go.” Going into the arms of Jesus seems the only place to go in the throes of our pain and fragility. May we be willing to enter his embrace when life breaks us.

The Theology Of Suffering-God's Purpose in Pain-Part Two

"God has appointed who shall suffer. Suffering comes not by chance, or by the will of man, but by the will and appointment of God."
-John Bunyan, quoted in The Hidden Smile of God, by John Piper.

"God permits what He hates to accomplish that which He loves."

***

Oft times it happens suddenly; the phone call in the middle of the night, the truck crossing the median, the dive into shallow water. Immediately you are thrust into a difficult period of life, a season of struggle, a short or long period of trial.

Somewhere along the way, I got the idea that life should be easy. Difficult experiences were the rarity, the intruders, and the abnormal freakish events. Historically and biblically I’ve had it all backward.

In thirty years, I’d never had a call from my friends’ mother, then, one night it came, “John didn’t want me to call until he was certain he’d live…” In short, a truck had crossed over the median and straight into his car, all family inside. John had to be extricated from the car with the “jaws of life.” All four of limbs shattered, both eyes blinded by battery acid. His wife suffered spinal injuries, one child a small concussion, the other fine. Three years later John has made great progress, but struggles daily with the damage done to him in the accident.

One of the best-known, present day stories of struggle is that of Joni Eareckson Tada, who, “26 years ago, was lying on a hospital bed in suicidal despair, depressed, discouraged, after the hot July afternoon when I took that dive into shallow water, a dive which resulted in a severe spinal cord injury, which left me paralyzed from the shoulders down, without use of my hands and my legs.”

Since God is for us, and since,
“All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven” ---Why trials? Like the climber with his piton (a piton acts as an anchor to protect the climber against the consequences of a fall), I need fixed concepts for my mind to hold onto. So I wrestle with trials, to grasp their purpose, to gain solid hold in a slippery chasm.

Joni lays out three key reasons for trials in our lives.

1) They are like a sheepdog leading us to God. Nobody is naturally drawn to the cross.

2) People suffering great conflict always have something to say to those who are handling lesser conflict. As Paul says in Corinthians, “Blessed be the Father of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort …with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

3) They increase our capacity for God.

As I wrestle with the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of each difficulty that comes across my path, the pitons holding me up are rooted not in the possible answers to the why questions, but in the ultimate purpose of a God that has love, mercy and goodness as key components of His character.

Make time to watch or listen to the video, because, as Joni shows, “People with disability are gods’ best audio-visual aids to how we should handle trials.”

Pondering God's Purpose in Pain-Part 1

"It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart."

This post comes out of my recent readings and experiences, coupled with the events of my mom's quick slide into death last week. If you've been alive for any length of time, you've wrestled with this question, posed by my sister. "When a dog is near death, we give it a pink fluid to drink, which kills it quickly. Shouldn't we be able to do that now?"

Seems a reasonable question, by human standards. My mom was weak with no chance for recovery; quickly her breathing grew strained, and the agony was apparent. My purpose here isn't to discuss morality or slippery slopes. My purpose is to think through this whole issue, in light of my mom's recent death, and my own inevitable mortality.

So, how does our finite, narrow perspective possibly square with the perspective of an eternal God that holds the entire universe-Earth, Milky Way and all-in the palm of His hand?

In light of the initial quote from Ecclesiastes, one purpose is to force us to come face to face with the fact that we all will die. I will die. You will die. Not likely to escape it. As my mom went from hospital, to nursing facility, to hospice, I thought through how I would respond. I even told my daughter that I wanted a room that has a window that you could look out of; and I'd want access to a laptop. Watching others struggle through sickness and death forces us to confront them head on.

In my own experience, pain and prolonged suffering force me to cry out to God, in hope for a time, or place where I am free of them. Ultimately, it is a cry for salvation, for God to deliver, and even, to bring us to the satisfaction of our hope-eternity in Heaven, in Christ's glorious presence.

Finally, one would hope that pain would be a window to cry out on behalf, not only of ourself, but for others who also are in pain. Potentially, it can bring us into a broad place where we pray for others who are themselves in hardship, brokeness and pain.

In the final analysis then, I understand the longing for the Pink Drink. Our momentary pain and longing however, "is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."