Despair or Faith
Isn’t it remarkable just how easily you and I can become absorbed in and entranced by the things of this world, even while knowing in our hearts that our citizenship is in the next (Phil 3:20)? We know that we are “aliens and strangers” upon the earth (1 Pet 2:11) and that our minds really should be set on the “things above” (Col 3:2) but still the world around us with its daily grind, its incessant demands and its siren sounds threatens constantly to drown out the heavenly call. Thank God that we have our houses and our cars, but once again because we are frail human beings there is the ever-present danger of becoming so absorbed in our “panelled houses” that the things of eternal value remain undone (Haggai 1:4). Thank God too that our Lord can use loss, heartache pains and trials to refocus our minds.
According to Solomon “It is better to go to a house of mourning Than to go to a house of feasting, because that is the end of every man, And the living takes it to heart” (Eccles 7:2). Life’s uncertainties and vicissitudes convince us that this is true. Our prayers flow freely along with our tears at the open grave. Our thoughts of heaven are more poignant at the hospital bed of a Christian friend. The promises (“I will wipe away every tear”) are never so real as when we struggle with persistent pain. C S Lewis put it this way:
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Sadly, not everyone is drawn closer to his God by life’s slings and arrows. In The Moon and Sixpence, Somerset Maugham has his unnamed narrator say, “It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.” Perhaps we have seen this happen. Maybe that described us before we learned that God is with us in our pain and before we came to understand that He can use even our suffering to draw us closer to Him (Rom 5:3-5; Jas 1:2-4). In a world of suffering the antidote to bitterness is FAITH.
Rex
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