Suffering, to what end?
God has given Melanie and me cause to reflect on suffering quite a bit over the past few months. Why does God bring suffering into our lives? How are we meant to react? What does it achieve?
I will try and pull together a few thoughts on this subject over the next week or so. This first post includes an exerpt from one of the updates Mel and I sent when her Dad had his accident back in October 2006. It was an event that brought the important things of life into focus and allowed the urgent things, that we so often fixate on, to fade into their proper place in the background.
We have been taught many things, particularly from the book of James. It has been amazing to take joy in encountering a trial like this (James 1)! It has not been easy or fun, but God – often through the graciousness and love of his people – has been there reminding us that there is so much more to this life than what we often let it become.
We have also learnt FORCEFULLY that "Instead [we] ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'" (James 4:15). Our flight plans have changed more than five times and as I write this note, I hope we will be home in DC late on Wednesday night. God has proved his timing is perfect and every frustrating circumstance that has kept us here has been clearly illuminated as God's gracious and perfect timing.
In a congregational sharing time, on our return, I shared how convicted we were that James's encouragement to "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds" was neither a pithy Christian version of 'don't worry be happy' nor a retrospective platitude 'look back and laugh.' Rather, James is forcefully calling believers to embrace difficult times as those that develop perseverance and lead us to maturity.
It is my conviction, and observation, that without difficult times our spiritual muscles atrophy.
Stay tuned for more thoughts on this. Feel free to post comments to keep the discussion going.
About Me
- PMinDC
- From Sydney, Australia, married to a lovely American, living in Washington DC, I work for a Native organization and attend a multi-ethnic church in Nothern Virginia. Having lived in the U.S. for almost a decade, I call Tucson, AZ and Davis, CA my 'American home-towns' but Sydney (and Australia in general) is still a very special place to me. This blog is about reflecting on life as an alien (spiritually and by virtue of my immigration status) and God’s call that believers in Jesus be his ambassadors.
3 comments:
Interesting that you mention that - last night I was watching an australian ABC documentary about one of my school friends' medical work in an aboriginal area. One of the people she interviewed was suffering because her 29 y/o son had just died and while she considered herself a Christian, she was continually asking why God would do this to her.
I think that when death suddenly becomes a close reality, it certainly helps to bring ourselves back into perspective. My grandmother has just been diagnosed with cancer, and while I know she loves me very much, talking to her on the phone Friday night, I had never ever witnessed her having so much gratitude for me calling, how much it made her day etc.
"The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth." (Ps.145:18) We seek out God more when we experience difficulties and it's comforting to know that God is continually present. The omnipresence of God should motivate us to cling to Him more fervently.
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