BLOGGING TOWARD SUNDAY…

If you know the story of Job, you’ll remember that he came to a place where, after losing his family, possessions, health, and enduring the “help” of his friends, he cried out, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”  I believe that the only people who can say something like that are people who really grasped the significance of who God is.

If you pay any attention at all to the Bible and history, you’ll know that down through thousands of years, trusting in God has not meant worldly success, but suffering, persecution, and sometimes death.  But from a purely human standpoint, suffering is to be avoided at all costs, and is frequently understood as a sign of God’s displeasure.

One of the most powerful things I have learned is that in the life of the Spirit, suffering is often involved.  Obedience to the will of God is very seldom the easy path.  To put our trust in God is not, contrary to the tv preachers, to be always free of depression, free of failure, free of anxiety and fear.

My own experience of knowing God has involved times of darkness and uncertainty.  In my life there have been many dry periods when I was much more aware of the divine absence that the divine presence.  I am not one who walks around with an ever-present hymn of praise on my lips or with constant joy in my heart.  I have learned that no matter how close I may feel to God, life is hard.  It is also a mystery.  There is much that happens to us which we will never understand on this plane of being.

 Happily, though, that is not the whole story.  While I have known and still experience difficulties, temptations, doubts and failures, I know, too, that God has made good on God’s promise to be with me in the valley of the shadow, even during the times when I have felt abandoned.  There have been times of dying…there have also been times of resurrection.  I have found myself understanding in the deep reaches of my soul the truth of the psalmist’s words:  “He lifted me out of the ditch, pulled me out of the deep mud, stood me up on a solid rock and taught me how to sing….”

I have often told my classes that sometimes in my life, when the pain or grief has seemed almost more than I could bear, that afterwards, looking back, I can readily see that in those times the hand of God was at work.  The times of real spiritual growth in my life have seldom been those times when everything was going great.  I have learned the most the hard way, and that’s not just pious talk…it’s true.  It is in the moments of weakness that we learn to rely on what God can provide.  It has been the weeks or months when God seemed most absent that I believe God was most active in my life.  (more on this tomorrow).

Filed under: Blogging Toward Sunday