"Share in SUFFERING as a good soldier of Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. 2:3)
Control. Who doesn't like to be in
control? Situations out of my control frighten me. In Wild at Heart, John Eldredge encourages men to spend time outdoors
in the elements, because the wildness of God's creation reminds us that many
components of life exist which I will never control. If you've gone down a
raging white-water river on a raft or kayak, you know that you have zero control
over those rapids. You can only adjust to what the river gives you and ride it
out accordingly. For those of you who have experienced a major storm -- a tornado,
a blizzard, a hurricane -- you also know that you have absolutely no control
over that storm. You adjust to what the weather presents, and you endure.
Other life circumstances often carry frightening
principles that in comparison can make river rapids look like a swimming pool. I
may have a certain amount of control over my health, but no matter how many miles
I log on the treadmill or how many cigarettes and hamburgers I turn down, cancer
and infectious diseases are still possibilities. I have very little control of
the national economy. It ebbs and flows without a whole lot of input from me
personally. Some factors are out of my control. And of course this is where
Christianity's critics come in and say, "Well, if there is a God, why doesn't
He exert direct control over hunger, disease, poverty, natural disasters, and
war?" And I don't have a perfect answer to satisfy all the skeptics, but I do
know that God created a world that would be filled with free moral agents who
each rebel against His control. And even in what we observe in nature, man's
sin has disturbed a delicate balance in nature. Something is amiss. And the
story of the Kingdom of God is Jesus declaring Lordship over all earth and each
of us playing a role in bringing every creature, every rebel, even death itself(1
Cor. 15:24-28), into subjection under His control.
But until that time, we SUFFER in a world
that is still under the Genesis 3 curse. And you cannot
change all the sources of that suffering and bring them under your control. So
if you cannot eliminate suffering, the question becomes: how do you handle it? Fifteenth-century
Italian theologian Marsilio Ficino says, "We are not always strong enough to
deliberate, fight, and put up resistance, but we are always able to suffer
well." And that's what IS in your control. How do you respond to adversity? You
can become bitter. You can find someone to blame -- maybe even God. Or you can
fill yourself with the strength of the One who will overcome all of it in the
end.
To His Glory,
Caleb
