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Suffering -Through the Apparent Silence of God Beverley Russell - June 2006 (free to copy) FOREWORD It seems that there are many resources on the subject of suffering and disappointment with God’s answer to our prayers, and included in those are many wise sayings immediately pertinent to the point. They are often put in a clever and meaningful way and they do add a sharp and concise message on the subject. I am grateful to have gathered and used some of those authors and many pithy sayings to stimulate my own thoughts. However, nothing that I have read in the literature, in my faith on the subject of suffering, with reference to Job and other suffering worthies in Scripture, or any other literature by those outside that faith, has hit the gnawing spot in my heart and the disappointment I so keenly felt over pain which has occurred in my life at different times. In that regard I have tried to put together something that does help me. I hope it will help others who are also searching. There are some ideas on God’s responses to His people in the Old and New Testaments with some discussion on the different methods God used to inform about His purpose, and to punish wickedness and sin. It also seems imperative to understand that God’s son came not to do miracles and healing with big power displays, but to grow faithful men through unhealed suffering. As well, the question of large scale suffering in racial or national trauma is discussed where many people seemingly suffer to the end without relief. There is an attempt to answer that, and to show how God might work with His people to bring about more people to His name and purpose. It can then be better understood how the wholesale and national suffering, which some people go through, is never relieved, and from which they die terrible deaths. In their dying, still bound by bonds of evil, there are some precious souls who, rising above the evil, ask, Christ like, that the evil ones are forgiven. God cares less for winning causes than He does for winning men, and sometimes the former is sacrificed for the cause of the latter. But in that endless suffering, it is a fact that God remembers the fruits of goodness derived from the ill will of the evil ones. There is a greatness of heart which grows out of that evil, in the prayers of those that suffer. May it be that importuning, and the fruit that has been borne from the suffering, will be the forgiveness of the evil ones. As needs be, there is a discussion on the incomprehensible measures God uses in our suffering and on the disappointing “no” answer. That is caused by a misunderstanding, where our measure is quite different to His measure, a state which is hard for us to grasp in our mortal being. There are 27 one page discussions, not dependent on one another and sometimes with repeating pertinent points. But each one works through a set program of understanding, where hopefully we can grow in faith and hope, piece by piece, to appreciate tragedy and suffering. I have reaped more than I sowed in putting down these thoughts. Green pastures have replaced the desert, and there is still water, when there was groaning and a flooded torrent. I am restored by His shepherding rod and staff for my forward journey. My cup is overflowing with goodness and now I am drinking, as the song says, from my saucer. I am blessed that as the Lord speaks to me, that I may speak, and as He fills me with His fullness and my heart overflows, then I may also tell of His overflowing love to praise Him. There are supplementary works to this on “Suffering -Through the Apparent Silence of God” available from the same author, entitled “Travelling Through Tragedy, Carrying Burdens and Managing Life’s Unavoidable Sadness” and “Forgiveness and Reconciliation” and the work “Kith and Kin”, “The stories of Genesis, A Consideration of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph”, 600 pages. ************************** INDEX 1. About suffering 2. Is God hiding His face when He is seemingly silent? 3. Why does it have to be suffering that leads us to the joy? 4. What do we learn from our suffering? 5. Hope in a future, when there seems no future in suffering 6. When the answer from God is “no” and the suffering continues 7. Are we disappointed with God when we suffer? 8. More than importuning in importuning for our suffering hearts 9. If the answer is “no”, what then does God offer in our suffering? 10. Clear words from God about suffering - creation to the kings 11. Different words from God about suffering - kings to the prophets 12. Jesus answers about God’s apparent silence were still not enough 13. Was the mission of the son of God perceived as a failure? 14. What did the terrible crucifixion do for us in our suffering? 15. How did God instruct the people now about joy and suffering? 16. Our righteous response to God is His reward 17. God’s measure is not our measure 18. Love God and be content with the “no” answer to our suffering 19. Are we satisfied with God’s answer about suffering? 20. We are incomplete without the mind of God in suffering 21. We are surprised by time in our joys and our sufferings 22. Miracles in our time of suffering 23. We are surprised by any joy found in suffering 24. Memories are important in suffering 25. Choices to make in our suffering 26. God’s non answer in our suffering 27. God’s promises to us in our suffering Suffering - Through the Apparent Silence of God 1. About suffering To people who are suffering, the gospel sounds like the good news that it really is. It offers hope and comfort, with no threat of punishment. Even in the most hopeless situations where it seems to others that there should be no reprieve, there is hope. So it really is good news. Suffering is a great equalizer, for it can apply to young or old, to weak or strong, to rich or poor, to black or white and to every national identity. As well, it applies to humans who are more good than evil, and to those who are more evil than good. Suffering does not divide people, for it strikes inside every human heart, where we know there is a divided heart. We find therein good and evil, and it is suffering which more amply divides that two way heart. If God is with us, suffering stirs and nourishes the goodness in our hearts so we can say “thank you for this evil prison in which we have entered”, as some have been able to. Suffering humbles everyone, for it is not possible to be proud and self important, when we suffer. There is no competition in suffering for no one wishes more of it than another person. Sufferers of all persuasions long for help, and plead to be reclaimed from the pit. Sufferers cry out for solutions and when none comes, the comforters who have come to help in the difficulty, are as impotent as the trees. Comforters cannot solve problems and recognize their impotence to heal a permanent disability, or to change the behaviour of a tormentor. No one can manage that, so no one can claim the cure. Some bystanders turn away and walk on the other side, maybe for selfish reasons, or for religious reasons, but comforters go down onto the road and into the pit with the sufferer and find an understanding of love and grace there, and a healing of sorts. They recognize that God is in that place there. God blesses the tormented sufferers and the comforters alike, when they are both in place, because His face shines in the pit. Suffering can make us interdependent for we cease to be safe in our own secure life potential. No sufferer is self sufficient. Everyone suffers at some time or other in their life, and all sufferers need help. Godly comforters know that there is a blessing in the giving and the receiving of help, but ultimately the eventual dependence on God is the only safety net. Suffering people have no desire to think of the possessions in their lives. People are important, things are not important, luxuries become a burden. The physical necessities of life are a sufferer’s only need. Godly sufferers learn patience, dogged patience, until they become helpless God loving saints, with a never ending source of importuning with a bothering of the Father, day and night, in every waking hour. The importuning for a list of things gradually becomes a soothing silence as the silent partner with God realizes that God already knows what is required. Sufferers abandon reason and ask for the seemingly impossible, with an uncomplicated sense of being able to whisper in the ear of the Father. They have learned to trust their dependency on God and His love, and earnestly do so without regard to criticism. The approach, in the terrible need, will not strengthen any character towards independence but it will strengthen the connection with the Father so that He is walking beside the depending sufferer. There is a fatigue in trying to escape from the suffering, when it seems that it never ends. It is a tormenting thorn, a weeping sore, and any transforming acceptance seems elusive yet. Poverty, poor in spirit, mourners, the meek and helpless, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, those who need mercy and peace, those persecuted for righteousness sake, those reviled and accused of all manner of evil “… Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for your reward is in heaven, Matthew 5. They are all dependent sufferers, long sufferers, with a joy in the future. ************************** 2. Is God hiding His face when He is seemingly silent? Job said, “I go to the east, He is not there, I go to the west, I do not find Him, When He is at work in the north I do not see Him, When He turns south I catch no glimpse of Him”. God is often seemingly hidden, but His silence, His deafness, His blindness is all part of His plan to strengthen our relationship with Him. If we do not let it destroy us, what does not destroy us, makes us stronger, for there is no virtue in standing still, and standing still is really no option. So that suffering can, as well, be creative of goodness and understanding in the consideration of our calamities, and the calamities that befall others. The cross we bear makes its mark and redeems us from the obsession we had about righting things that cannot be righted. Actually God invites us into that hiding holy place of His, if we confess our iniquities and our transgressions, and place ourselves on His love and mercy. His mercy shall compass us about so that when we are afraid and fearful in the suffering place, the songs of deliverance about that hiding place will encourage us to be fearless and strong, for “Thou art my hiding place”. Psalm 32, and He assures us that “there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known”, Luke 12:3. That place with God is a most Holy Place. People band together closely with others in order to commit violence or suppression with impunity, and they trumpet the need for secure, rigid conformity to exclude differences of any sort. They fear change so much that they feel the need to control to keep safe. Then they deform into a society less compelling than it ought to be, good will is absent, and an evil takes over. Sadly then the original purpose of something very valuable is destroyed. “Pain and death”, or “food and life” are choices incarcerated people are asked to decide for themselves, while around them all the forces in these basic human needs are pushed and pulled 24 hours a day. It is with profound courage and compassion that sufferers survive the inhuman dignities placed upon them by captors, and torturers and they need to remember that it is easier to receive the pain and moan with it, than it is to be the source of the inhuman behaviour, for there is no escaping the human consciousness that makes inhumanity possible. So, in that sense, human captors or persecutors and torturers are always worse off than their prisoners, or those who they torment. The tortured one has a choice to react in his/her own personal way. It is an inner decision, and not necessarily the result of the extremities that have befallen them. It is possible to preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, even in the most horrendous extremities that man may lay upon another man. That transforms an evil circumstance from darkness to light, from certain death to everlasting life, from a terrible hell to a brightness where heaven’s angels dwell. Daniel’s three friends in the furnace were accompanied in that terrifying ordeal by a fourth, a protecting angel from God. They saw Him with them in the fire, as we also can “see” Him, when all else fails. There can be a deep hurt and anger against God for His seeming abandonment in His hiddenness, so we need to remember to impress upon ourselves, that God does not turn a deaf ear and a blind eye, as it seems, and as CS Lewis described the fearful feeling. God does see and hear in the camps of the evil ones, and not only that, but He assures us that He is there in the middle of the evil. He does not forsake those sons and daughters of His as it seems, for He sets the joy before them, and will send an accompanying angel to bear them up in the extreme. He wants us to “LOOK UP”, but if we are so deep in the pit in the evil camp with our eyes permanently cast down, alas we find, miraculously, and mercifully that He is there with us. He is not hidden, and He whispers, “Look up, look up for I am here with you”. ************************** 3. Why does it have to be suffering that leads us to the joy? That “suffering before the joy”, that “cross before the crown”, means we have to believe in advance that the joy will come far into the future. The Father may not rescue us or make the suffering easier, but He has promised to be there with us in the suffering, and to reassure us that the future joy is there for we “suffer for righteousness sake … be not afraid”, and “it is better … to suffer for well doing, than for evil doing”, 1 Peter 3:14-17. It is not the reasons for the suffering that we should be looking at, but why the suffering begins and continues. The why of God’s silence, sealed lips and deaf ears, is the issue that we have trouble accepting. It might be that fear of abandonment when He has so much more of greater importance on His mind than our seemingly insignificant perils. He has envisaged suffering as part of our contract with Him, but we might feel it is out of control. We feel, like Job, that He is not in the north, south, east or west. He must have abandoned us already. “How can He be here with us?”, and that concern leads some of us to deny His presence. Suffering can lead us into a hopeless pit, if we allow ourselves to go there and like frozen assets, or a tied up bank account, all our knowledge of God is worthless and no earthly good. That breeds faithlessness. And faithlessness hangs like a heavy stone about our neck, weighing us down, further into the mire of the pit. It seems the weight cannot be cast aside. Then God is abandoned. But it is not like that for everyone, not for those who are firmly rooted with the Father. We are assured that the body of Christ is there, in the most terrible suffering, for he was there before we were there. Where there is a chink of light, or a touch of a hand, or a glance, or a look, or a tiny kindness done, that indicates that the body of Christ is there, responding. Isolation and despair can be counteracted by the defining influence of God in the small things, if only we will look and see. For this comforting message, it is well worth the risk of a tiny message in a dangerous place, an eye message, a finger message, a message from God of His love, in this seemingly God forsaken place of a torture chamber. If I will not abandon God for any cause, then suffering has a meaning for me, only me, for no one can see it or feel any meaning, only me. It is me who has to take my eyes from the backward glance and focus forwards, looking up. I only I can discover myself, in the looking up and with that opportunity serve my suffering. Or I, as a comforter, can also discover myself in the opportunity to love and serve a sufferer helping them to look up. Is that the reason for suffering, that, in the needs around us, we can help others in their suffering? Or is there more? We know "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep". But that is in the continuing and constant prayers for relief from suffering with a general acceptance and understanding of how God works. We know that He may say “no”, and that suffering is only for a season. So in all the circumstances, we can be hopeful, and grow faith. And we can still say, “God is good”, even in the most terrible suffering. 1 Peter 1:6-9 tells us that our “heaviness”, in our trials, is only for a season and that trial borne is more precious to God than gold. That praise and honour, and the glory given to God will be recognized at Christ’s appearing, when we shall obtain "the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls”. The reason for our trials, troubles and suffering, is so that our faith will grow. Verse 6 says, "...even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith....even though tested by fire, may result in the praise and glory and honour of God in return”. With Peter’s Godly advice and this knowledge and picture in our minds, we are clothed with a panoply of faith, which can even better protect us as we move through the vicissitudes of our life, in all our sufferings and in all our torments. ************************** 4. What do we learn from our suffering? There are times we don't do so well in our trials, but we know that we can still learn from our mistakes, and troubles, and keep heading towards our goal of perfectness with Him. This hopefulness underlines our disappointment in ourselves. We know we can be where Jacob was after his long life, often tainted with deceit and suffering, but perfected in his death. There are hundreds of questions for discussion in Genesis, for which we have no answers. But it is the understanding we bring to those questions (not the answers), which we can value most. Suffering is so that faith can grow, not only our own faith but other people’s faith, as well. For in our own death even in a holocaust, there can still be reasons and lessons to be learned. It is interesting that with children in hospital, even in their dying, so carers say, it is imperative to keep encouraging them in good behaviour for their own sake. It is so they can rise above the trauma and think about the love that they have and react accordingly with obedience. Of course, a child does not know that he can be “made perfect through suffering”, but a child does know (or should know) obedience. In obedience even in childlike faith and hope, there is a goodness learned. We know that Christ “learned obedience by the things he suffered”. It was the faith he had in his Father, and the hope of things to come that made him perfect in his suffering. “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”, Mat 16:18. No darkness is too great for God, for no trial, no suffering, is beyond the transforming power of God. The pattern of bad transforming into good, finds the afflicted victim blessed, and ready to understand. Its fullest expression is in Jesus and his suffering. Christ needed to suffer, and Peter, not understanding, tried to spare him suffering, and was reproved by Christ, Matthew 26:51. So even if we try to stem some suffering, storms, microbes, tragedy, natural disasters, medical calamities and the evil of men, suffering will not pass us by. “By his wounds we are healed”, Isaiah 53:5 and we think of holocaust victims who turned the evil of men into a service for good, or the promise of good. We are not promised prosperity and comfort as God promised the old faithful men, but we are promised a fourth man in the fire. The body of Christ is the means by which we learn from the suffering, because those in the body grow together and learn about suffering. He is the body in the fire for us. It would be easy to avoid those in need. The widowed, unemployed, aged, invalids, divorced, persecuted, those lonely and those lied about are all in need, as well as the culturally deprived and the national outcasts, but our presence with the loving concern of comforters, is God beside those sufferers. That causes us to act, for we would be like Him. What sounds bitter to us can be transformed into a sweetness in the soul. The troubled intensity of the question in our minds is answered with the sweetness of understanding and love. And our salvation is assured. It is not the learning of the doctrines, or the understanding of the terms and conditions of the future kingdom which prepare us for the end. It is the understanding of Him now, and His offer of completeness in Him, which is the basis on which all the other may be placed for consideration. Some do suffer more than others, and we constantly hear of people far worse off than we are. “I complained, with no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.” However some are more able for tragedy than others, and God does take that into account as well. So our reasoning needs to fall back to the individual’s relationship with God. When we are beset by tragedy of any sort, the degree of it is not the point. It is how we relate to God in His decisions about us. He loves us very much, if we build good relationships with others, making good responses. That will please Him. That is the lesson He wants us to learn. ************************** 5. Hope in a future, when there seems no future in suffering As every disappointment falls like a veil over my hope, I need to find a fresh reason for looking forward again and again, in faith and hope. It is like lifting that heavy veil again to look up where He is. It is imperative to keep on doing that to see Him without despair. Hope, faith and purpose are the key essentials for looking forward, for without hope there is a risk of giving up the journey. People with hope and faith and purpose have a choice even when there is no evidence. Hope is necessary in every human condition. The hope and joys need to continue in our lives, so that we can continue to be hopeful and joyful. The hopeless miseries of poverty, sickness, captivity and evil speaking would be, without the comfort of hope, insupportable. So hope and joy, in a daily dose, whatever is the condition, is necessary. Psalm 62:5, “My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him”. We are told they can be found in the most extreme situation. Hope is a determined faith that something good is ahead. It is more than optimism, for hope implies courage to keep it real. Romans 8:24-25. “Hope that is seen is not hope, for what a man seeth, why doeth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” Hope involves a leap of faith with courage, not just a looking on the bright side, but a living there in that bright side, and a loving on the bright side, when it is still dark and unknown. We find we do not know what to pray for in our extremities, and sometimes we cannot even pray at all. But we are assured that at that time of confusion “the Spirit makes intercession for us” (verse 27). “Continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel”, Col 1:23, 27, and that “Christ in you is the hope of glory”. Chronic illness, or terrible incarceration, or the birth of a disabled child, or trying to live under people who tell lies about those they should love, all create people who are long suffering. Long sufferers are mentioned with great integrity on the Bible, those who are blessed with good fruit. It is one of the collective fruit of the spirit of Galatians 5, “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” Hope is not a guarantee for present relief, but if the required hope fails to be realized now, it is not that God has let down the sufferer. God will actually use the continuing infirmity, the continual torture, the unrelenting tragedy, the ongoing situation of falsehood to produce goodness. When and if suffering passes and the darkness lifts, and we are out of the pit, then we see the weapon with which we can defend others in need. We can honour the suffering of others without judgment, that they are in the pit where we were, and now, through the trial they now endure, we can also service their needs and be with them in the suffering pit. Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory, Suffering, where is thy joy? Torment, where is thy glory? Where is the hope of glory again? When will it be all joy? Where is the victory from the sting of death? Why does it all have to be so prolonged and never the promised relief? If you believe in the God’s love, you believe Someone is there. Someone is watching as life ticks away. Someone loves you, and if you have hope then there is the overwhelming feeling that it is fully worth the risking of a life to go forward, for that Someone goes with you. When the answer from the Father is “no”, and when the importuning fails (maybe for the life of a child, or for a burden that is never lifted), what then? It is as if the door is slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double locking on the inside, as CS Lewis put it. There has been the overall dependence upon God, and all that the suffering taught us, wasn’t that enough? Why is the answer “No”? Then the future can only turn into hope. ************************** 6. When the answer from God is “no” and the suffering continues David sinned, and Nathan recorded that sin, and rightly predicted to David that the child of the sin would die. David “fasted” and “endured the sour grapes with his teeth on edge”, but God’s answer was still “No”. When the child died, David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and came into the house of the Lord. He feasted on bread after his fast, and it was butter and honey and sweetness for him again. That is the story of suffering, first a prayer for deliverance, then with the “no” answer, a recovery - all in a nutshell. So recovery even from the “no” answer is possible. (There will be grief over the lost thing, and that grief and its recovery are not dealt with here, but in “Travelling Through Tragedy, Carrying Burdens and Managing Life’s Unavoidable Sadness”, by the same author.) “Make thy way plain before my face”. God did for Stephen in his death. He did for John Baptist, and He did for Jesus Christ. There are profound moral judgments in these cases who suffered in terrible grief what they could bear. Then they said, “Forgive them…. “. We may not suffer more than we can bear according to our character, but we will suffer. To suffer is His purpose with us. It is most difficult for groups in their collective prayers to pray for those who are very ill and dying. It is hard for us individually to pray for those who are suffering when the likely answer seems “no”. Our solutions are not God’s solutions and we learn that often, so how can we pray for recovery, or for a quick uncomplicated death? The loss of confidence with importuning recognizes a need to place something more with the importuning. After the importuning prayer for relief, we know now that the very best prayer we can offer is for God to be there in the sickroom, or the torture house, or with the person of unsound mind, or with the person who endures falsehood. It was said at the time of the plague in London, that God had turned His face away and was “asleep”. That is the opinion of those who are not close with God. Many people in a time of suffering with no relief in sight find an excuse to go from God, but not those with a Godly purpose. Those who suffer early in life often exhibit a remarkable maturity and those mature enough know that the characters of abusers suffer more than they realize. The dehumanizing of people in terrible suffering from wicked regimes does not dehumanize the sufferers, even if that is the aim. It dehumanizes only the abusers. If it is unrealistic to talk about suffering when one has not been there, so we must leave it with the victims to speak. They see the inevitable dehumanization of the tormentors as they continue to inflict pain on sufferers. Those hurters only hurt themselves. The mentally ill trying to reconcile a life out of control, often feel dehumanized and that they can never get it right. No one can live, like Macbeth, in the dark night devoid of moral purpose, and where life has no value, and no inherent point to it. So how each one is delivered from the suffering he endures is between himself and God. It is only for us to stand by and praise God for His gift of life in the face of the victim’s death or despite, supporting when we can. Abraham blindly carried out God’s seemingly pointless command to commit the unthinkable, to bind and sacrificially murder his only child. In the light of His promises to Adam to replenish the earth, and to Abraham of fathering a great nation, it was illogical. Human beings in their search for truth bow to things that are beyond their understanding and reason. It was so for Abraham’s religious and faithful attitude, for he was almost beyond human terms at this point. We cannot reason that circumstance out. So, blessed is the man who does not need to know the answers to every question. The perfection of Jacob over his lifetime is a remarkable, evolving thing of God, with plenty of “no” answers. We cannot question that, but we can try to understand God’s unique way with us. ************************** 7. Are we disappointed with God when we suffer? What then is the alternative - disappointment WITHOUT God? We would not want that! John 11:25 “even though he were yet dead”? Even though your brother is dead? “Believeth thou this?” and Martha did believe. The Bible never belittles disappointment. There are chapters of disappointment in Job, on anguish and despair and plenty of arguments. There is only one chapter on restoration in Job, (41). And “then Job answered …” The Psalms are full of how to deal with suffering and the hurts of our enemy, those who torture and revile and torment and threaten and tell lies about us. Each message there in the Psalms sends us back to God to heal our disappointment with Him, and to understand His ways. What needs to be known is that what we feel now, will not continue. It will gradually be replaced by a more peaceful outlook on the situation. If God is your mentor you cannot struggle with God. Jacob could not struggle with the angel, who left him with a shuffling limp, a clicky hip, a shortened sinew, and a damaged sciatic nerve and arthritis. What would Jacob prefer? Surely he chose to bear the pain, and be reminded of a wrestle with God, than to be relieved of the pain, and forget Him. Paul, with his thorn in the flesh learned that it was best to bear it as a message from God, about dependence, and not to struggle any more for the healing of the thorn. Our disappointment is in itself a sign that we hunger for something better, and whatever our suffering situation and disappointment with the outcome, that we will regain a better outlook. As we ache for something better, we long for a sign from God. In the absence of a sign/message from God, our faith and our hope are the longings for the end of the journey. We know that ”He will wipe our eyes of tears”, and that “our flesh will see God”, no more mourning, no more death, no crying, no pain, no fear and no more disappointment then, but what about now? The great promise is that we will see it all with our own eyes in future. So now we must do the mourning, and the tears and enduring the fear and pain and the disappointment? 2 Corinthians 1:3-7, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God, for just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort”. It is the left behinds who worry and fret, and cannot see what good can come now. The disappointment, with God’s answer, can be overwhelming, but God’s disappointment with us and God’s rejection of us are worse. We may never know the purpose of our suffering, but we need to rest assured that God has one. None of His should ever risk rejection. If we can come to terms with trauma and tragedy, and so forgive the unforgivable, and even ask for blessings upon the evil ones, we are well equipped with God’s mercy and His love and His compassion, and with an expression of His grace also learned from Him. The subject of forgiveness is not expanded here, but dealt with more fully in “Forgiveness and Reconciliation”. To rectify injustice, instead of continuing in angst over the evil, often means that we go down a dark and complex path, coming to terms with our loss of character, or a loss of physical or mental ability. Then at the end of that path, God will transform us into a true child of His, where we will, like Him, embrace and extend forgiveness. With our good fruit we will remember not the evil and the evil one. This is how God wins the evil men, for it is their redemption also, when they seek it. ************************** 8. More than importuning in importuning for our suffering hearts We need to grow that close relationship with God for our prayers to be effective, whatever the outcome. “Pray without ceasing” takes on a new meaning. Without ceasing? One cannot keep up a list of importunings day in and day out and so “without ceasing” must mean to be in such a close relationship with God that He knows our list before we ask. Our prayer life then becomes a state of mind not just a list of requested items. Tragedy teaches us that there is something much more to importuning in importuning. It is something which accompanies the importuning list, and more than the regular occasional turning to God in prayer. It is such a close relationship with God, constantly LOOKING UP, always needing to be in that holy state, so that He knows our needs before we ask. That holy state also enables us to know what God wants of us. If our close relationship with God is not there in our prayer life any importuning will be impotent. How can we ask Him to be there with us in the suffering, if He does not already walk with us? When there is a negative answer or a denial result to our prayer, then we will not appreciate His message, and that will crush us. If we can think of those who suffer in gulags and camps and in terrible regimes, on and on for years and years, and never lose their faith, there must be some state of grace which sustains them. Those who go to their deaths like Nurse Cavell, (WW1) forgiving her tormentors and wanting God to be seen in the suffering, point the way to the answer. It was the same for John Baptist, the same for stoned Stephen, and the same for Jesus the Christ. “Forgive them…” It is the same for our loved ones who die from long mental or physical illnesses who take their struggle in God’s name, and for Him. Any struggle in His name is a bonus for Him. “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee …, “, Daniel 3. Those incarcerated in terrible pits, like Nelson Mandela, vow that good can be found everywhere. Even in the endless Robbens Island Solitary Confinement it was possible to find there a liberty to use the endless moments alone, for loving, for thinking, for future planning for the millions of black who daily struggled for life in South Africa. In that disconnection from the real world, in wicked isolation, consideration of one’s own life blood and the force which courses through those veins can still be dedicated to God. That is indeed a true walk with God. As God was there in that furnace with the three friends of Daniel, so it is for us as well. It is that God is there in the terrible grief. That is in itself a liberty. We pray then for God to be there to uphold the suffering one, so that they can bear the suffering and become a testimony for Him. We know that the importuning of some mothers does not always save their sons. We know that the importuning of the Shunammite woman did save her son. It is not to do with the sons of the mothers, or the sins of the mothers, or the amount of faith of the mothers, it is to do with the will of the Heavenly Father and His purpose. It is not a lack of faith to cry to God, “but If not…”. We need to focus on God, and help our loved ones to focus on Him, so that whatever happens, life or death, the comfort of His presence overrides it all. They are then held tightly in the palm of His hand. We can encourage ourselves and our group prayers to pray earnestly for the recovery of our loved ones, but if not, then that God will be with them, holding their hands lifting them up, easing their pain, sustaining them through the dying and death, holding them in the palm of His hand until they too are at peace. The pain of suffering is like a broadcasted message from God, and indeed the thunderings and the lightnings when He does speak, herald that He is near. We need only listen. ************************** 9. If the answer is “no”, what then does God offer in our suffering? God does not offer us a peaceful way to come to death, but He does offer ways to overcome the apprehension of the circumstance. Even then, God is not satisfied to offer life and death but He also offers the after life, eternal life in his kingdom, the ultimate gift. The message of 1 Corinthians 15 is about life and death and resurrection and how love transforms us. Those words “corruptible” and “incorruptible” have significant meaning for those approaching death. Proverbs 3:20-26 also reassures the weak who are slowly moving towards a spiritually discernable future. “When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid; yea thou shalt lie down and thy sleep will be sweet”. Those who have lost their virility can be at ease in the circumstance where God has placed them and are encouraged and reassured with God’s provision of eternal care. We are also all encouraged by “Be not afraid of those who kill the body”, for they cannot kill the soul, and that suffering is like a spec in eternity, for “after they have suffered awhile”, 1 Peter 5:10, “the God of all grace … will make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you”. We know that God is with us in all the torment with this promised comfort, a comforter as the gold is being refined. “For our light affliction, which is just for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen : for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal”, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18. “Light affliction”? Sometimes it does not seem “light”! It seems to be eternal torment. That is because I am mistaken, for my ways are temporal, and a dot on the horizon of God. It is the ways of God which are eternal. And as spiritual maturity takes its place, we are often more easily able to understand that to be a victim is better than to be a perpetrator of persecution. The human consciousness of inhuman behaviour is quite acute, and we are readily able to see cruelty. Although it is possible to be swayed by those individuals or highly sophisticated groups of people or nations, who think they have a right to persecute, there is always a doubt, and God can fan that doubt until He is ready to release the sufferer. God also offers us the information that no one is born wicked, or cruel. Self concerned for survival maybe, but never in combat mode so that we as newborns terrorize other people for our own survival. Torture or inflicting pain on others is a learned response. If deep down in every heart is love and what we know is right, how does it come about that some of us end up hating so that there is evil will and torture and persecution? It is worth then retracing our steps to the initial and lovely response we have one for another as newborns in Christ? Before he was made whole again Job (19:20, 21) said “My bone cleaveth to my skin, and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth”. “The hand of God hath touched me.”, Job 19:20, 21. Suffering is God’s design system for it equips us for life now and the future. We can speak to Him, like, “rouse yourself, God, for you have forgotten us? Why are you silent? Are you asleep?” or “Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? Arise, cast us not off forever. Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression. For our soul is bowed down in the dust: and our belly cleaveth unto the earth”, Ps 44: 23-24. That’s how it feels, forsaken and forgotten, and forever appears to be the message. When, Lord when? When will this oppression cease? Joseph always heard the “soon, soon, soon” croon from God, “Be patient I am ever near”. Similarly, “not yet, not yet”, God says to us, and we do not know when the “yet” will be, but our trust in God is building in the pit, and the letting go and letting God, is working towards our release from the pit. That is His offering to us in our suffering. ************************** 10. Clear words from God about suffering - creation to the kings There were always clear words and messages from God to His people in the OT – which tree to eat of, when to build an ark, manna from heaven, sandals never wearing out, when to move on, when to stay, how to spy, when to make war, and when to leave it to God and even a brazen serpent to look upon if they were harmed, a wonderful sign of compassion, even today. God did not hide from the wilderness Israelites, for in the startling familiarity they had every proof that He was with them in the shining face of Moses and the tables of stone. There were rules in abundance on how to worship, but even that did not make obedient children. God’s life instruction and every provision of over reaching care, made little difference to the Israelites. They responded with ill temper, sin, evil, unfaithfulness and rebellion and they turned their eyes to other gods, and they listened unhearing to the His songs He sung them about the hiding of His face from them, if they continued in their sin. They said to God, ”All that you have said we will do”, but they did not Why did their faith falter and their hope desert them? Why did their evil ways bring them so much pleasure in the vast desert in the 40 years journey, and later in their life in the chosen land? They did not thirst in the waterless land. They were fed and sheltered. God made every provision for their health and safety and their worship of Him. But that was not enough, and they asked for a king saying, “We want to be like the other nations round about”. Seeking to emulate the glory of the other nations in their admiration, they turned away their attention from the desires of God. Was it that God was too close and that He tended them too closely? That cannot possibly be so. Or was it that there were not enough willing hearts to respond to God, making good relationships with Him? So, when God gave them choice of will their hearts took them towards evil. God, even in His disappointment with His people, granted them a king, when they asked Him. He promised, “My eyes and my heart will always be there,” 1 Kings 9:3, in the glory of Solomon’s Temple. Yet in one generation, with all the gifts that anyone would ever want from God, and even with the notable gift of wisdom from God, Solomon took Israel from a kingdom dependent on God for every convenience, to a great political and powerful force. But on the way Solomon forsook God and encouraged his subjects to admire him and his visage, and turned that kingdom into something closely resembling the Egypt from which they had fought so hard to escape. We often feel God’s unfairness, and His silence, and His hiddenness and so we too have major reasons for disappointment with Him. However, if God leaves room for doubts and doubters, and we know He does, He also leaves room for the faithless, and in my disappointment, even for me. If there is room for me in my rebellion and disappointment, what is the difference? The relationship with God must be the difference. There is no Divine abdication in His gift to us of freewill, but it does allow God to be disappointed with us. If there is no respite from us, and our rebellion, with us disappointing God, He will finally reject us as well, as He did His people. But if we reach out to touch Him as He reaches out to us, we will find a safe harbour. Old people often know about the safe harbour, for they enter their final draft when they are frail and tired like a ship lowering the sails. They come into a secure place from the raging sea, and with a putting down of the anchor they find help and comfort readily available. It seems without the hustle and bustle of responsibilities in the daily life it is easier to be there with God. So it is for anyone who comes into that safety and lowers his own sail, leaving his/her difficulties with God. So do overwhelming gifts and great blessings from God ensure there will be no suffering? No. Without a secure relationship with God, riches will be as useless as the riches of the evil man. They were useless for Solomon, and he fell into great evil. And many kings emulated him. ************************** 11. Different words from God about suffering – kings to the prophets It is often a tragic dilemma, not getting what one wants, or getting what one wants. Solomon asked for wisdom and was commended of God for his choice, and received riches as well. The more he thought about all the gifts he had been given, a large harem of wives and concubines, a large palace, a well trained, best equipped, well stocked army, a strong thriving economy, with excessive wealth and large symbols of power and status, the more he thought about himself as self made, and he moved away from God. The brief vision of a covenant and the promises that went with the implementation of his gifts from God turned into an untended light in an unsafe place and destruction loomed, and God withdrew His sanction. The ruin of that king and the end of that kingdom was greater than the rise of that son of David, and the promises God made to him. And so in the lives of the ensuing kings, and then in their captivity, God turned from kings to prophets. But the prophets too, speaking and enacting the messages that God had given them, failed to rein in the evil that God’s people determined to do. God seemed to draw further and further away from his people, as they made so little effort to fulfill His desires for them. There are seventeen books of the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi. Each time, when the people’s cry was delivered to God by the prophets, the prophets would bring back the answer. Their continuing cry to God was a cry of disappointment that He is seemingly is hidden, turning His face away, and uncaring of their troubles. The answer from God that repentance would restore them with God, came back through the prophets. They never heard His searing reply. God was not silent, for surely it was true that He spoke through his prophets. It was no more drama of the supernatural kind, no more fire not burning in bushes, no more floods of water gushing from rocks, no more heavenly manna, and 40 year lasting sandals with a light in the sky to follow. It was more than that now. The miracles had not moved His people to obey Him, nor the prophets, so God’s permanent record first preserved in fragments, and eventually brought together in one book, the Bible, became His encouragement. This permanent record eventually reached us. That record was preserved for us all and became His lasting record. It is worth saying that even when He sent His son, they did not recognize him. Peter brought the message that He condemned the “willingly ignorant”, 2 Peter 2, who decried Him in word and deed. “I have withdrawn my presence, my slowness to act is a sign of mercy to you, not slackness, though my judgments appear stern, I am suffering with you, repent at anytime, despite it all I will forgive you”. God was condemned by those within and outside the covenant for being slack with Israel and their wickedness, despite His well known standard for them. Jeremiah 14:9, “why should you be as a man, astonied who cannot save us”. Simeon and Levi were condemned by Jacob on the occasion of the ruthless behaviour at Shechem, and later at Jacob’s death bed blessing. “You have troubled me to make me to stink among the nations”. It was not Jacob’s name so much which came into disrepute. It was God’s name, for He was known as the Saviour of the Jacob family. So God wished it known that it was not slackness, but mercy shown to His people over those long periods of slack time. 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slack, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering to us ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance”. He was not silent to their sufferings, but His covenant included obedience. In the face of such wickedness their God was viewed as merciful by the nations round about. But in the continuing display of evil practices, the perception of the onlookers changed. God’s mercy with the seeming lack of punishment of the Israelites, made Him appear too longsuffering, like a God of Ridicule, so “God gave them over to their sins. I do not this for your sake but for mine. I will sanctify my name”, Ezekiel 36:22. It began in Eden, with a highlight at Shechem, and ended with Paul’s message to the Gentiles. Here at last were some “who were dead to trespasses and sins and were now quickened to receive the gospel”. This mystery was revealed in Ephesians 2:1 and now God used His son as a focus for penitence and restitution. ************************** 12. Jesus’ answers about God’s apparent silence were still not enough We could never risk criticizing God’s stance on mercy and love and compassion and grace, for, in Jonah’s time, it only took forty days for that terrible city of Nineveh to repent. We also hope for the happy ending like we know happens in fairy tales. Hope is the saving of it all. Not knowing what is in the future, listening to the messages from God, and pressing onward, brings on hope. The books of the prophets are all like that. They mostly end on a high note of the hoped for better things. There are terrible descriptions of evil and its consequence in their pages, pleadings for mercy but too few able to repent and turn from the evil. Each prophecy is enclosed at each end with hope. It is like the whole of God’s word, which in turn begins in hope with a new Ideal Creation and ends in wonder of the new Kingdom Creation and in between is the terrible record of human history together with the record of those who managed to be righteous through the turmoil. The wonder, after the failure of the prophetical messages, was the advent of the Son of God. When the prophetic utterances ceased, the Israelites were divided, seemingly without hope and in bondage to one or the other of their conquering nations. Each time it happened they were a bad example of God’s provision and useless as a prominent people exhibiting the works of God. They were so deficient in showing His loving face to skeptical neighbors that they became like dross to be disposed of in the rubbish bin. There was no Joseph, no Moses, no Joshua, no Samuel, no righteous kings or prophets to deliver them. Worst of all, their worshipping structures were in rubble piles. That brought shame on themselves, and disrepute on the name of God. Four centuries of God’s silence seemed to be a reoccurring Divine indifference, first when the Israelites lived in Egypt, after Joseph and before Moses, and then after the prophets and before the appearance of Jesus Christ. These two long silences might mean that a few righteous people’s longing for a divine intervention became a catalyst for God’s looking again at His people from His turned away face and apparent silence. The Jews, when only Judah was left, knew to watch for a Messiah, and so the waiting took on hope again. These few righteous who looked for the Son of God became the catalyst. Still, after the prophets, and after God’s long silence, with the first advent of His son, the complaints of the disappointment with God, the hiddenness of God and the silence of God continued as before, and contributed again to the questions of unfairness. God was not silent in that Son made in His image. Anyone who asked Jesus questions got an answer and without pomp or ceremony, with no smoke, no fire, no thundering, no lightening. He reassured his listeners, “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”. Even his family said, “he is out of his mind”. He was not like a King, nor like a Saviour of the world, as they viewed him. And as well, in the expectation of the critical others, Jesus was not attuned to the welfare of his followers and in that, it seemed he was “not fair”. He did not take away all sickness or death. Some were revived and some healed, but not all of them. The prophets had promised relief from illness and death if the Jews repented, but Jesus did not “wipe away all tears from their eyes”. “Which is easier to say ‘Your sins are forgiven, or to say get up and walk?’” They felt his stories of the kingdom left much to be desired, for it never was just around the corner, and his teachings revolved more around God’s forgiveness of sins than healing of bodies and performing spectacular miracles of saving people from stonings or death or crucifixion. So, sins forgiven take the leading role in this preparation for the Kingdom, rather then spectacular healings that would have really impressed the crowds. Who can tell about sins forgiven or not? Only God knows that. But the people could tell if more lame men walked and more blind men saw. So they required more evidence for their own eyes. They lacked in hope and faith and wanted only the present to be relieved. In their misunderstanding they suffered faithlessness. ************************** 13. Was the mission of the son of God perceived as a failure? Jesus failed to measure up to the expectations of the Jews and so pride, hypocrisy and legalism continued to thrive amongst the Pharisees. Jesus told his captors that his “kingdom was not of this world” when they chided him for being a powerless king. He said, “My kingdom is from another place”. That hardly inspired confidence in any of the doubters, and so in their futility of understanding, they placed a thorn crown upon his head and his purple robe was covered in blood and dust. They were scornful and laughed and derided him and crucified him. God had wanted a response of love and wonder to His son, not a response to miracles and power displays. Jesus resisted such responses by limiting the displays and he downplayed the miracles. “Tell no one”, he said. We know the miracles and power did not work in the OT, when there were many opportunities and abundant displays for his children to observe His care and love. God knew those manifestations would not work again in the long term, but the people still craved them again. God also knew that His miracles and His power did not foster faith in the faithless. So He used the miracles only to intensify the faith in the already faithful. The Transfiguration with Jesus’ dazzling appearance, with his robe shining white as snow, in the presence of Elijah and Moses, did not compel long lasting faith in even his disciples, Peter James and John. He said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”. Matthew 26:38, and it was, as he agonized with his Father, that they slept and “could not watch with him one hour”. So a big display did not even now inspire lasting faith in his disciples. God already knew that what He wanted from the people cannot be won over using power displays. Jesus prayed, “Thy will be done”, and went to his death and was taken to his grave, without calling down any legions of angels. And God did what He said He would do, without summoning His power to save His son. The life and death of His son became history and then evil took over once more from righteousness. The son of God died in a terrible crucifixion and the very creation of God in nature seemed to reply. The ground shook, and the tombs cracked open, former dead people wandered around, the sun hid, the sky went black, and as well the Temple curtain ripped from top to bottom, and the Most Holy Place was opened to every man to walk with God. When there was no answer from God to the forsaken cry of His son with no rescue effort to save His son, this seemingly silent Father disappointed those around the cross who misunderstood Christ’s mission. God’s non intervention at the cross brought a terrible grief to his disciples and mockery and derision upon the disciples. That death still causes mockery even today. God did not intervene, but in that non intervention He made an access to Himself for all of us who would also take up our cross. He showed that it was the greater love that the son laid down his life for those he loved. The end where happiness is, the eternal kingdom, required this apparent silence of God. “He saved others, himself he cannot save”, they mocked. How could this man hanging on the cross have ever cried, ”I have overcome the world” ? If some did perceive the cross as a failure, God did not. He meant it to pave the way for us so to suffer also, even unto death, and so have our path laid out to His door. “I am the Way”, he said. But others might say in their misunderstanding - * Why do wicked people flourish and evil generations prosper? * Why is there poverty and depravity, where people make riches and evil the gods of their lives? * Why is there no answer when we plead for God to come down, to send His son, and still justice does not prevail? Because that is the Way of God for now. ************************** 14. What did the terrible crucifixion do for us in our suffering? Jesus, the son of God, made possible an intimacy with God that was not possible until His son paved that Way. They/we now have an ability to make a close relationship to the Father as had never been possible with a nation. The curtain in the Temple had made a division between God and the people, and now, broken down, revealed a God who needed not the national obedience, but the obedience of each individual who would approach Him. No one previously could touch the representing articles of God, such as the ark, no one had seen God face to face and because of His seeming remoteness there, they did not hold Him in any intimacy, until He sent His son, Jesus. Jesus came to heal and raise and give hope again. Jesus’ own response to his suffering was one of fear and trembling and crying and tears and pleading with God. After this, the despair of others fades significantly, Job’s despair, the anguish like in Lamentations, the pleading like the prophets for the nation’s goodness and healing. But then he said, “Thy will be done”. So the son provided a new way of holding things together, resolving the sinner’s alienation, restoring the fallen and reconciling the intimate Godly relationship again. It was Jesus Christ the son of God, the suffering servant, the forsaken one, the crucified one who understood the struggles of everyman, who provided this new way, and when he rose from the tomb where they had laid him, on the third day, their faith was made whole and they believed. Indeed to this day, to that son we make witness, as well, with celebrations of his birth, his death and his resurrection. And then the wonderful promise that this stricken and risen Lord made, was that he would return to fulfill all righteousness and be a king at last. The trials and torments go on, for millennia, and still saints live under the promise of his return. That he has not yet returned, feeds the disappointment, the same long apparent silence of God, the same Face seemingly hidden from those who love Him. But hope over rides the feelings we have of abandonment with the questions that the world is unfair, that evil thrives and is not quenched, and so much goodness is expunged. God might have promised to put everything under the feet of Jesus, “Yet we do not see everything subject to him”, Hebrews 2. Do we, as well, really believe that good triumphing over evil will ever happen? We do in hope. If Jesus had not suffered, but rather used his power to disable his enemies, he could not be now one of us, and would have failed in his mission to be one with us, to redeem us. Somehow, someway God needed to provide a means by which we can return to the purity we were at the Creation, before the freewill He had given us led us to The Fall. We too can now identify intimately with God through the sufferings of His son. Not only does God know about our pain, but because we now know God intimately, He shares in our pain. God has a concern with His love for us for He hates the evil that we do, but in His mercy He forgives us. God loved His people and wanted them to strive for goodness, but the evil that reigned within their hearts which produced the deeds that quenched His love for them, disappointed Him,. So He sent His son to soak up the evil like a sponge when the stab is made, or when the spear is thrown in the heart. So we now know that evil can be absorbed by those who love Him and evil can be transformed into good ness and love. Asking for blessings on the evil one might just turn away the evil. “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” Forty days the risen Lord had walked the earth, glowing in his resurrected self and able now to convince some of the deniers and the doubters. Surely now was the time to overcome the Romans and bring in the longed for Kingdom? But one day he rose in the air and was never seen again on the earth. Only then did they understand that he had come not only to show them, and future believers, how to deal with injustice, but to show us all what God is like. He gave us all instructions in how to grow a church full of believers as a new dwelling place for God, where he is head, and where every heart breathes in faith about him. Is that enough for us? ************************** 15. How did God instruct the people now about joy and suffering? Christ endorsed his disciples with the Spirit of the Father, and they multiplied more disciples for the Father. He invested those with the same Spirit of God, and sent them out to places where he had never been. He sent them to the ends of the earth. They grew more places for Him. He was present in the most awkward, the most evil, the most unlovely, the most dangerous and the most unlikely places. He is there still, and we see Him in the face of His church. The temple is no longer a structure of bricks and mortar, like Solomon’s Temple or Herod’s Temple. It moved in the first century into “the body of Christ”. Paul reminds us, “don’t you know, that you yourself are God’s Temple, and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” It is impossible now to destroy this edifice which God has set up for we are not our own. “Destroy it, and I will raise it up in three days”. If we are of God, He requires us to do His work. He can do it perfectly, of course, if He wants, but He assigns us His work, because He wants us to learn more about Him. What better way to learn about him, that to do His work. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men”, yet He accepts the frail, inadequate worker who with his/her free will, makes wrong choices and foolish decisions, to represent Him as Holiness upon the earth, and guides him to righteousness. What other employer would do that? Paul equates our misguided tendencies with prostitution, and asks, “Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with prostitutes. Never. 1 Corinthians 6. We cannot, with any conscience, just leave problems up to God to solve. He requires some effort on our behalf. We need to see His will, and let Him work through us, “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God, who works in you”. As Saul went about persecuting Christians, it was Jesus he persecuted, as Jesus told him on the Damascus Road. Jesus’ own body was in those Christians. It is Jesus in them/us who work the works of faith. Hurt those who Jesus loves, and hurt Jesus. Support those who Jesus loves, and we support Jesus. Be one who Jesus loves, and others will see Jesus. Work in the church for their salvation and it is a work of God. That is why Saul became Paul and never forgot the lesson that those Christians he persecuted were Christ ones, and that he was persecuting Christ, in persecuting Christians. The responsibility is awesome, that if God does a work in us, and that if He is present with His son in our lives, then others may see Him and know Him and understand. If we do not struggle to be like Him, then we might deceive others, and we might deceive ourselves, but of course, never Him. We, with our freewill and wayward ways are the greatest cost to God. Here is the disappointment for God. When outsiders look at the flawed humans who represent God, they are disillusioned with God and cannot see His face. God does not need us to fulfill His purpose, but He does want us, and offers us the way to be part of His plan, to be “members of his household”, brought near from “faraway places”, in “a dwelling in which God lives by His spirit”. But He does not need us. God is not now in His tabernacle tent, or the Temple of stone, but He will be in us if we invite Him. It is the manifold wisdom of God, the divine manifestation that is now manifested in each one of His people. They in turn dwell in Him, and that is how we are His Temple. There is no doubt there is no risk for the ungodly, for without any faith they are never confronted with any disappointment with God. They are safe in their ignorance and will pass away. The ignorant is sure in his mind where he is in the scheme of things. If we keep in sin and evil, we risk God’s allegiance to us. We can, with His gift of freewill, at anytime remove ourselves from Him. However He keeps on trying with us, giving us opportunities to make way for Him. The risk to the believer is to bear the hurts and the tragedies and the flawed responses to any goodness in life, and the disappointment that God is apparently silent or hidden, or not even listening. That burden bearing means that we are left only with faith in a future hope. ************************** 16. Our righteous response to God is His reward We might align ourselves with a religious faith, but that does not guarantee our life in Him. A set of doctrines do not a life in Christ make. There has to be an individual commitment, not a group commitment. That individual commitment should remain paramount throughout our life, and no religious sect on earth can change that. We need the sect for social life in Christ, for our spiritual encouragement and for our education in Biblical matters, and for the encouragement of each other in worship. But that will not guarantee our Kingdom place. Conversely, if we, still believing, but disappointingly leave membership of a religious sect, that does not mean we have left His truth. It is His truth, we do not own it, and we cannot consider who is in God’s Truth, and who is not in that Truth. We can decide who is in, or not in, our truth or religious sect, if we belong to such a group, but we cannot reject a believer from God’s Truth. The “Basics for Christian Living” is the faith statement for a life in Christ, the “so that I will” of doctrine. Endurance of the difficulties is not just the ability to bear hard things that the Lord lays upon us, but the ability to turn them into the glory of God. Here is a difficulty for us, for it seems God expects more of us than bearing burdens. He expects us to bear the burdens that appear too hard for us to bear, and He says, “I am here”. That reassurance means that we can feel safe from our difficulties under His care. God may not answer our importuning as we wish, and it is often as if He does not hear, or is silent, or that He has turned His face away. But when all is said and done, in the dark hours of the night when there is no release from the pit, and the light eludes us, and we are howling with a terrible grief of rejection, He whispers, “I am here with you.” And that is, after all, enough. It is His “hiding place where He will preserve us, and where we are compassed about with songs of deliverance”, Psalm 32, from the reviling of men, their accusations and exclusions. So it is not where God is when we are hurting so much, but where are we in the hurting? Job (7:17-18) groaned from where he was, scared with dreams, and terrified with visions, and would choose strangling or death rather than speak with God, (for he knows he has come short of God’s standard). At first he cries out in frustration for God to leave him alone. “Where is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention, that you examine him in the morning and test him at every moment? Will you never look away from me, or let me alone for an instant?” However, the continuing argument in the book of Job, where Job defends his position, eventually demonstrates his unity with God, when God endorses Job. But there are five men here, with Job at centre stage. The accusers and the comforters argue with Job (35) that he has sinned and that he is so insignificant in the eyes of God that whatever Job would do, will not be noticed or have any effect on the universe. “If you sin how does that affect God? If your sins are many what does that do to Him? If you are righteous what does that do to Him? Or what does He receive from your hand? Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself and your righteousness only the sons of men.” But Elihu was wrong, for one person does make a difference, the faith of a single man counts very much, our response to God’s testing matters very much to Him. Job’s individual response was God’s reward, as is ours for Him, and then we are blessed. ************************** 17. God’s measure is not our measure Goodness was in God’s creation plan before sin, so in the struggle for a righteous life it is a matter of reaching back to the prime state of Creation. God had given the instruction to the man and woman, “Do not eat …”.and when they disobeyed, sin entered in. That state is rightly called “The Fall”. When sin entered into the life of men and women, God introduced a pathway back to His righteousness, and this encouraged those men and women to make a struggle against evil. God made it attractive for those seeking Him to choose good because we would rather walk in this evil world, indicating a baptismal commitment to God with the hope of better things to come, than walk with no commitment, without hope and no expectation, culminating in worthless oblivion at the end of our lives. In our understanding life is unfair, and difficult, and Job, without his wealth, and with his children dead, sitting naked on a pile of ashes, argues with his friends that he has done nothing unforgivable, and that God does not follow his rules of fairness. Even Job’s wife encourages Job to “curse God and die”, for what else is there to hold on to in so much tragedy. In the terrible depths of despair and the place of evil, why would we expect God to be fair by our understanding? Because it is His measure, we need to understand that our logic cannot understand what God decides, and how He arrives at that point, but we do know that He will comfort us in our confusion, when He uses His measure. We do not imagine that God can do nothing about unfairness, or about those who beset us, or that He finds difficulty in keeping the chaos in check. We do not believe that He requires us to live our lives precisely, where we react with measured mathematical like precision, before justice can prevail. We cannot guarantee that if we pray hard enough God will yield to our desire. God did not ever promise that good people will thrive with health and prosperity, and that evil people will fail. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. The answer to all those discussion questions is that God is trying to teach us something, other than what we think might be on His agenda. To begin with we can always find the man with no feet, when we at least can and cover ours, and that in itself creates an opportunity which we should not forfeit, to demonstrate our beliefs to the unbeliever. And, yes, God will not test us beyond what we can stand, and justice is in God’s hand. But they are all answers only partly right. The answer also is that God is frustrated and grieved that when He leaves men to their own devices, bad things happen to good people. He is disappointed with the vicissitudes of life when His children are in trouble and pain of their own doing. The Israelites saw no connection between their suffering at the hands of their enemies and their total lack of regard for God’s commands. God declined to answer Gideon’s question, Judges 6:13, but that does not mean that goodness precludes suffering now. For we know that is not true. So God promises to be in the hurting with us, when it hurts. If we have that good relationship with God through all our life, then when it hurts we can fall back on that. He understands our howling in the night and wallowing in the mud, He understands the deep dark pit, for He is there also. Physical realities in our lives are nothing to do with our spiritual realities. He is able to encourage us to see that, and we need to ask Him to help us see that. Terrible physical realities might present God as the enemy, and if we find that thought a reality, then we will be hard pressed to deny that. The life and death of Jesus demonstrated that, for physical oppression and evil overtook his life, and he died. Others also were, and are martyred for His sake. But none of those saints thought of, or think of God as the enemy. So our sacrifice for His sake need not predispose us to criticize Him, when we are not relieved of our physical suffering, for we understand that His measure is not our measure. ************************** 18. Love God and be content with the “no” answer to our suffering Earth’s afire with heaven and every common bush afire with God, but only he sees who takes off his shoes, the rest … see only evil. Men dance in tune with the Lord, but if there are those who cannot hear the music, they perceive the dancers as mad … and complain about the dance, bringing in resources to forbid it. So the tormenters in our life on earth make it grossly unfair. The sinless Christ found that out. But he also found a God of sacrificial love. No one is exempt from tragedy or disappointment. And if we stake our life on justice and a fault proof life, with every contingency considered, and every escape route covered, then we set ourselves for a loss of faith. In any case, if miracles do happen and people are revived from imminent destruction, those miracles do not prevent their eventual death. Sure, out of darkness, and from the unfairness and unrighteousness, a bright light can shine, like the miracle of the resurrection morn for Jesus Christ. The cross overcame evil, and gave us a way to relate to righteousness, but the cross did not take away unfairness and unrighteousness, and so we need our resurrection morn as well. That requires a new heaven and a new earth for which in expectation we pray. “To love God”, the first commandment, requires that we love Him, not only in the good times but in the difficult times as well, even in the terrors and tragedies and the fear and the loneliness and the persecutions, when we are in the wilderness of life. He does ask us to run with broken legs, or sing when our throat is dry, to pray when the words cannot come, to sit on an ash hill, and argue with tormentors who take wrongful points of view. He does expect us to ask for blessing upon detractors. For hurting hearts that is a very hard task, but blessings on detractors, bring blessings back to us. That’s God’s goodwill revolving around about us. We might doubt our value to God when our tormentors taunt us with “Do you think God cares about someone like you?”, “Do you think the Maker of the Universe would ever drop down to speak with you?”, “Does He need to explain Himself to you?”, “We have God’s mind on Truth, and we know that He does not want you”. That’s when the little spark in the cloud comes by and God reaches down and speaks to reassure us, and asks us to bless the tormentors. Here in four chapters, (Job 38-41) is God’s defense of the charge of His role being unfair and disappointing. It is not an acknowledgement of the unfair, and over the top pain we feel over our trials, or even an understanding of our disappointments. It is a lesson given by God in how He manages the physical universe, and how Job cannot do that, and how we cannot do that. By implication then it also means Job cannot manage the moral universe either. So we get our lesson as well, that we also are unable to manage the moral universe. Job repents in dust and ashes and every trace of thinking God unfair, and any disappointment with God vanishes. God asks us, in the lesson of Job, to do likewise. But we are not told the full answer, still. God declined to answer specifically as Job had asked, and the friends and comforters withdrew themselves with their mistaken ideas and pompous speeches, and Job himself withdrew His questions. Then it was that God vindicated Job If we can also cast ourselves upon the Lord even when we do not know all the answers, He will vindicate us as well, sometime when He deems it is right. As Job eventually accepted the ways of the Lord and withdrew his questions, we also, not fully understanding the way of the Lord, can trust in Him to do it right, without question. Then we will be able to accept the “no” answer with better equanimity, and be content. ************************** 19. Are we satisfied with God’s answer about suffering? Any explanation of our suffering would not satisfy our relentless questioning of why this or that happens. We hear it around us, and we hear it in our own heads. We place our lives in His hands on our baptism, yet there is still no plausible knowledge in our spiritual experiences in Christ or even in our logical stance of fairness that would allow us to understand all His ways. So God does not try us with answers too hard for us. God Himself does not give us an answer. He supports us in the suffering but the suffering itself is too hard for us to understand. If we attempt to answer there are too many inconsistencies that do not follow our pattern of logic. When God stepped into my life, into my time, then I perceive, in my understanding that God has to exist by my rules. Not so. He steps in and out of time as I know it, so I cannot comprehend it. Is man even capable of understanding how God works his physical and moral world? No. Can man understand the greatness of God, the creation by God, His omnipotence over the universe, over all of the heavens as we now know we are part of? No. Can man understand the time from before time and into future time? No. Can we, who live in the present, and remember the past, and wonder about the future, ever understand the whole picture of what He surveys and controls? No. When we say God is in control, we have to cast our minds into an unknown infinity with an unfamiliar time frame, which does not resemble anything that we are familiar with. We are in the realms of impossibility for our finite minds cannot comprehend it. We cannot understand sound and colour if we are born deaf and blind. So then Job’s questions, and our questions of the same ilk, belong to another place rather than our customary place. It is a higher point of view, a more complex and unseen place, beyond our comprehension, and a place forbidden to us yet. So the answers to those questions and the answers about space and time, belong to God who formed them. He can move about in them, we cannot. He looks at the whole of history and on into the future. He talks to us about them, for he says “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day”, but He cannot explain them to us. He talks about eternity but in our finiteness, we cannot understand the infiniteness of eternity. God’s truth of eternity is elevated above us, but in His graciousness He comes to us and allows us to exist in a time and space, which is only a small part of His time and space, a place which we can understand and comprehend. That is why we are limited in our understanding of suffering. To us, it is an overall unseen picture. We look at the past, the present and the future in a sequential series of frames, one after the other. God sees the whole collection at once from above in a great pattern of His creation. Perhaps some can better understand the view from above than others can, but no one can understand the ultimate details of the view. God told Moses to record the creation in different styles, and gave us different measures of understanding of His creation. God gave Job as much as He considered Job could comprehend, about that same creation. Job was honoured with that gift of explanation, and then barely comprehending, was at last content with God’s stated position that Job’s rules could not apply to God. Now Job understood God’s request that he could leave the rest to Him. Theologists have debated, without much success or understanding, the different positions of foreknowledge and predestination and things that we cannot foresee. In another life we may understand these puzzles but for now because we do not have that skill, we are entrapped in our time, where space and time and the other mysteries are not revealed to us and we cannot foresee. Our perception is warped, and we may call God unfair. We do not understand the success of evil, the unfair events, or the sadness that overcomes us, and when so often righteousness is overcome with unrighteousness. So we remain unsatisfied, yet trusting Him. ************************** 20. We are incomplete without the mind of God in suffering When God took Abraham out to see the stars like the sand of the seashore, and again when He reassured him after the near sacrifice, God was showing him the transcendent, trying to help his understanding of eternity and the blessings that awaited him there. That is also the message of Job, when the relationship between God and Job was tested to the limit, before Job recovered his blessings. If we are His, as Abraham was, God tells us that that He himself suffers with us in it, in all the uncertainly, the longing and the pain and the lies and the loss, and even in our deaths, with the promises never fulfilled. Then if we accept that, God learns whether we are still clay and serve another, or whether we are truly a light in His image and are truly His. If we are truly His, behold we are His servants and are pleased to do His will. He holds the measure, and He has spared us to recover our strength to reflect His purpose. He needs us to be satisfied that at present we cannot grasp that and that it is later that we receive the blessings and promises fulfilled. And what does He say reassuringly? “The word is near you, in your mouth, and in your heart". When that beleaguered servant, Job, under siege, hears God’s message in the whirlwind, “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” “Where were you when I laid the foundation s of the earth?” “Have the gates of death been opened unto thee?” “Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?” “Declare if thou knowest it all …” he knows that he knows not about any of that. So God tells us that our knowledge is incomplete, science is important, and He allows, even encourages, us to be as close as we can to understanding, but our understanding will always be incomplete and limited. But to forget the limits where God has placed us is dangerous. Our personal existence or the creation of our earth, or the far flung universe will never be fully understood and is completely beyond our grasp. So is the search by man himself sufficient meaning for man’s existence? Yes, for it is God who allows it and it is He who sets the limit. "Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, O LORD, They rejoice in your name all the day long; they exalt in your righteousness". The imbalance in the world is also beyond our grasp. There is no seeming connection between virtue and reward and there is no seeming connection between evil and punishment in this world of ours. The randomness of violence and goodness does not seem to instruct us well. We are puzzled by all the philosophical problems that this seeming imbalance bring to mind, unless we realize that God lays the carpet beneath our feet, and often with an unexpected layer. He has assured us often. He is there with us in the most heinous tribulation, to lift us up and to mould us from clay into His shining light, but He still holds the measure of good and evil, reward and punishment. We cannot read or gauge those measures. What we cannot grasp must not add to our confusion. It must indicate to us that God is in charge of time and space and all the supposed anomalies, and the seeming imbalance, and so we hold on. If we feel all knowing and wise, then there is no need for God. Conversely the more we realize that we do not know, and that we lack wisdom, the more we can bring ourselves, in our incompleteness, to His feet and say “take me” for in my flesh I am nothing. ************************** 21. We are surprised by time in our joys and our sufferings It is said that Christ “was chosen before the foundation of the world”, and that “eternal purpose and grace were given us in Christ Jesus, before the beginning of time”.1 Peter 1:20, 2 Timothy 1:9. Our minds cannot fathom “before the beginning of time” - before Adam, before The Fall. God knew there would be a need for redemption well before His creation, and before this earth existed. There was no hastily thought up contingency plan when sin came in. We understand eternity as a continuing of our time, and to our credit, we can be reminded of that. We know the past, as we contemplate it from the present and ruminate about how we could have done better. We can only contemplate the eternal future from this now as we see the circle of the earth contained in space, from a window as we travel by air. But we, seeing the end of the journey in view, do not comprehend a never ending future like an eternal present. God helps us in this remembering about eternity, by referring back to His past record, where He has thoughtfully provided us with reference points. He does try to encourage us to do His will in the future, by recording what He has done in the past, but we have not the faculties yet to see outside our own experiences, so our efforts only have context with our own experiences. And so in our ignorance we may continue to see God’s responses as unfair, His hiding, turning His face away, seemingly silent. But He has “hedged us in”, Job 23, for our sakes. God does not enjoy keeping us in the dark about His future with no facilities or faculties to see the bright eternal light ahead, but He recognizes our limitations. We only see in the glass darkly. We are time bound, and will only make sense of the overall picture when our bodies are changed, when history has run its course. “All things work together for good”, is only true from the big picture for everything does not now work together for good. From the small picture of our time bound lives, good things are not working together and producing more goodness, for we see goodness assailed on every hand by evil. The teaching, Romans 8:28, is a comfort for us now, but the earnest is in the future, for we realize that then we will not be running about in chaos in this world. We do know that now Someone is guiding us toward that order of goodness and eternity, when all things will work together for good. Isaiah in 7:14 and 8:10 explains to us that He will be with us in His son. “Immanuel”, or “God with us”, until that day when He “shall quicken mortal |