Most of God’s people regularly pray that He will keep them safe from harm—it is a standing request. He may answer this prayer daily across most of the years of our lives, but there are seasons when He wills for us to be offended and wounded and heartbroken. Jesus once said to His disciples, “Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes” (Matthew 18:7)! We may wish it were otherwise, but so it is and so it happens. Offenses come; they are sure to come. Somehow they are part of God’s unfolding plan. And yet the persons through whom they come bear responsibility for what they do to offend.
Precisely how God is glorified through our pain and failure, I’m not sure we can know; but somehow we believe it is true because His Word so assures us.
Paul had his thorn in the flesh and it seems to have been part of his life until he died—there was no praise report sent out from prison concerning its removal. He developed some idea as to the why and came to some peace about it.
Job’s charmed life disappeared in one day and was replaced by a long season of unspeakable misery bombarding him from what seemed like every side. He eventually got some peace and perspective at the end of it all, when he finally saw himself as nothing and God as awesome beyond anything he had ever imagined. He put his hand over his mouth, speechless except for expressions of repentance.
Jacob lived for years and years with the grief of Joseph’s death weighing down his very soul into the sand and dirt. Every fair morning was tinged with bitter herbs. Every evening sunset announced the nearness of yet another lonely night, as Israel lived grieving over his Joseph. All the while his heart was consumed with loss, his Joseph was very much alive and having his own successes and trials of faith in Egypt. Eventually, great good came and old Israel’s pain eased, but only at the end of many years of grief—all stemming from so much hatred, jealousy, and deception.
Why does God deal with His own in such ways? Well, that is complicated and painfully simple. I cannot explain it, but I believe that is true, all at the same time: very complicated and very simple.
What we can know is that all of us are born for trouble just as sure as sparks fly upward from the fire (cf. Job 5:7). None of us are immune and no one can sufficiently insulate himself from life’s pain, neither by the best of good works nor by the truest, most earnest faith. God is God. We are not. He knows all things and His purpose is true and good. Created and finite, we mostly see life and its mysteries through a peephole in time and space; our perception of reality is dim and, most often, ridiculously inaccurate.
Knowing some facts and grasping a few concepts is not the same as knowing God. After all imaginable study and much contemplation, we still don’t know much about the Holy One or His ways. The essence of His holiness is His entire otherness and that makes Him beyond predicting—we assume from all we know of Him that He will do this, but He does that instead.
His covenant name, I AM, speaks of His utter independence, as well as self-existence. He is surely bound by nothing beyond His own character and pleasure. He is certainly not bound by our infantile, simplistic ideas of who He is. Knowing Him at all, personally and redemptively, depends on His revealing Himself; otherwise, He we could never know Him, except for His power and fearful judgment. For our salvation, He has revealed Himself through a glorious creation and through providence, which certainly includes His Word written, proclaimed, and redemptively applied in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
When He has ordained hard providences to come into our experience and cause disappointment and pain (some of those offenses that come), we complain from our wealth of ignorance—not from knowledge of much more than our temporary pain or our more enduring arrogance. If we echo the heart of Job, “He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree,” still, who are we to talk back to God, this God of providence, “who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11)? “Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” (cf. Romans 9:20). Yet we do at times, as foolish as it is.
If we ever become weary enough, we may cease our striving against the evident providence of God, admit our ignorance and emptiness, and seek pure mercy, and anything of good that He might be pleased to give—looking through the eyes of a needy child to our Father in heaven. Surely He knows best and all that He does is right in His eyes. O that we might see things through His eyes!
“The man declares, I am weary, O God;
I am weary, O God, and worn out.
Surely I am too stupid to be a man.
I have not the understanding of a man.
I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I knowledge of the Holy One” (Proverbs 30:1b-3 ESV)
May the God of peace give you peace in the midst of trouble. –TSA
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