A lady who had a pain in her side went to her doctor, he said that she had appendicitis and needed an operation. She decided to get a second opinion from another doctor who said she had heart problems. She said, “I’m going back to my first doctor. I’d rather have appendicitis than heart problems.” We know as we age that sometimes we don’t always get “good news” from our doctors, but we cannot change the diagnosis, only God can. That is the crux of life, we have to accept what is served us like it or not. It is how we accept the situation not the situation. That cannot be changed often times, but how we react can.
It is clear that many HICCites do not have an answer to my wife’s sickness and therefore words are inadequate, so why speak them, probably because there is compulsion to identity with suffering through Christian compassion and an urge to express sympathy. We are creatures of the heart and long to help if only we could, but we can’t and there it must stay. There is a locked-up frenzy in our inner man that cries out in anguish to know, yet knowing does not bring light, it only brings a greater burden.
Look at Job surrounded by friends, who reminisce with him and yet chide him for misunderstanding God, but they are limited by ignorance of God’s will. God’s will is often like a tennis ball that can be hit anywhere to land where we want it, but it may not be God’s will, just a tennis racket wielded skilfully but in error. Our frustrations, temptations, unhappiness and sin can lead us out of God’s will because of self determination, this cannot be God, not for me, He loves me too much, and so he does: but the night continues!
In Job 2:13 it is recorded thus – “So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.” Numb from the shock and dumb from the suffering. He was so afflicted he was hanging on by the skin of his teeth. He further says: “When I go to bed I think, ‘Oh, that it were morning,’ and then I toss [agitated restlessness] till dawn” [Job 7:4]. In all of us is there is the toss and tumble as we work our way to triumph. It is part and parcel of life in the multitude of vexing vicissitudes. Our bed sheets may indeed cover our body but what covers the mind for it throws off any form of wrap that brings comfort.
We can glibly quote texts that are often used like “all things work together for good” and possibly they do, but time may not reveal that, for eternity is God’s domain. Eternity is where we are heading and often confuse the substance of time for the ultimate reality when it isn’t. Mankind has become stranded in time and its procurements, which both dazzle and dim at the same time Zion’s joy and settled peace. We walk through a troubled turbulent landscape trying to find a vantage point for direction, and we spy a cross that points the way. It all hangs on Calvary and always will. The cross answers most things; it certainly explains the love of God.
So we suffer by degrees and compare ourselves to the blessed master, who suffered more than all. Suffered for the joy that was set before him, “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” [Heb 12:2]. The joy that is set before guaranteed the sitting down. Not just anywhere but in eternity’s throne that straddles time and timeless existence. For the cross perfected Him.
In this world is variety, change and succession, it does not alter. We bathe in the light which is soon enveloped by darkness; we rejoice in the spring flush and see it wane into summer which is overtaken by the riot of autumn only to be submersed by the rains and frost of winter, the cycles come and go. Equally chequered is the variety of human life. Our circumstances change and in that diversity we see the glory of God’s providence. “Providence is God rendering natural events subservient to spiritual purposes.” [Rev William Jay]. I doubt it can be better put. God has a plan, He will bring it in.
The world will frown and smile upon us in varying degrees, and it is that juxtaposition that troubles us, like the disciples we say “It is good for us to be here” and God says” arise let us go hence.” And so we do, and find maturity in the valley. That’s the way, that’s the blessed life.
