My initial comments on suffering are – no thank you. Sometimes I think God built me tough for a reason and other times I’m all over the place. I’m afraid of the dentist chair, fire, heights, disapproval and rejection, fast-moving rivers (when I’m on them), guns (until this week when I had some fun learning about them), and many more like a bad haircut. On the martyr subject, Jesus died for me. Salvation is His gift at an enormous price. Why would He expect the same from me? Then I start collecting the facts. Those men, who walked the earth with Jesus, died in awful martyr ways. The sweeter the afterlife the more unpleasant the passing? That is not an oxymoron. I don’t see any formula AT ALL. The suffering I did not mention above, that has been hardest for me, is betrayal. Even this past beautiful week in fellowship with the saints, there were two specific betrayals. I will not go into it. Being alive is like a trap until it is not. There is suffering in every direction. Go north and you need a tooth implant. Go south and your friend is in the hospital. Go east and you can’t walk as far as you used to. Go west and uncertainty for the future abounds. And then the friends with cancer – I cannot. Do you remember when a teacher bullied your child? Do you remember when that jealous friend lied about you and your other friend believed her? Do you remember when you shared a spiritual insight from scripture that was so special and that leader passed it off as their own in front of a crowd? But I hear things or read things and lose track of the source only to use it later in my writing! P.S. – No one owns the good news. Take the stick out of my own eye. The missing eye contact in a group that made you feel invisible? None of these are deadly but they chip away at your heart and you feel unsafe even in the body of Christ. The miniature offenses collect in a pile of disappointment and I eat more chocolate. My children and grandchildren are healthy and well but the foundation of the family model has a spouse only you don’t because he betrayed you. I have too many excuses to be frozen in time until Jesus takes me home because of my fear of suffering more or suffering real suffering? If my list seems silly it is the life of grief that is this life in our broken world because of the Fall – but for GRACE. You lost a tooth and I lost a friend and someone else lost a job. It is all grief over suffering and so the devil wins if we cry in place. We must not let suffering stop us. Picture yourself on a bicycle on a difficult mountain pass. If you stop trusting God you will fall. If you stop pedaling you will fall. That is the only formula I see today.
(This is first impression on suffering from my entering behavior. Have since caught up on what the Bible teaches and will continue processing.)
