The Occasional Masquerade

[Let] no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this.  For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know. – 1 Thessalonians 3:3-4

We, as Christians, have to live with a tension between the grace of God, His protection and provision, and constant tribulation.  There are probably Christians who don’t have any trouble.  The late R.W. Schambach used to say, “You don’t have any trouble.  All you need is faith in God.”  I know what he meant.  We do have trouble, and faith gets us through it.  It’s like Paul saying that our present light afflictions are nothing compared to the weight of the eternal glory these afflictions are working out for us. 

As quoted above, Paul is writing to the church at Thessalonica to encourage them.  They had heard that the Apostle was undergoing difficulties and persecution.   The question naturally arises in the minds of some people as to why such a good and godly man, a chosen and highly favored minister of the New Covenant in Christ should be suffering maltreatment and reversals. 

One of my oldest and best friends is an Assembly of God preacher.  We are practically brothers.  W go by the same given name.  Though we are currently separated by close to a thousand miles, if he and his wife needed something or if we did, we would do whatever it takes to get there to help or they to get here.  He, his wonderful wife, and their two adult daughters are all dedicated to serving the Lord in full-time ministry.  They have all kinds of turmoil, sickness, and financial difficulties.  They are better people than I will ever be, yet I couldn’t get sick if I wanted to and I have no debt and adequate money.  Someday I might even get to retire.  They live in a bad area of the country in a rented house in a questionable neighborhood.  By comparison, my situation is paradise. 

Nevertheless, I know that they have the “favor of God”, as people like to say.  Would I trade my situation for theirs?  Perhaps I answered that question twenty-five years ago when I decided that I was not called to be a pastor or minister of any kind, not so much because I feared the trials as because somebody has to plow the corn.  By that time I had met too many preachers who would have made fairly good shoe salesmen.   

Paul didn’t want his friends to be discouraged because of what was going on with them or with him.  God’s protection doesn’t always look much like protection from the world’s perspective.  In fact, sometimes it looks as though God has abandoned or is in hiding from those who most earnestly seek Him. 

God sometimes cloaks Himself, coming to us in places and ways and guises such that we are apt to miss Him if we are not alert and aware.  Our afflictions may be the way through which He gives us new insights, enables us to make new connections, and opens new doors.  He slows us down, keeps us back from some major disaster through a minor one.  We never know, but we can know that He will see us through and that He will never leave or forsake us.  No matter the result, no matter the apparent triumph of evil in the temporal realm, we are victorious in eternity.     

Test Anxiety

You are good and do good; teach me your statutes. -- Psalms 119:68

Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem, each stanza using the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet to begin each verse.  There is a tradition that says David wrote this Psalm as a means of teach his son Solomon the spiritual alphabet.  It is both the longest psalm and the longest chapter in the Christian Bible, having, alone, more verses than some entire books.  The constraints of the structure -- though no doubt losing much in the translation to English, still manage to give Psalm 119 a unique timbre.  It is a prayer, like many of the Psalms, but -- like the Proverbs, its focus leans toward the inculcation of wisdom with the purpose of transformation. 

Like Micah chapter 6 and verse 8, the 68^th verse of the Psalm manages to encapsulate a vast panorama of life and religion.  God is good.  He does good.  What He does is good.   This goodness in character and action can be realized by man – by His grace.  When Charles Spurgeon commented on this verse, he pointed out that God’s goodness is active and purposeful.  God means to transform us and even to perfect us.  The psalmist confirms our sense of this world as a place of instruction, development, and growth.    

Thinking about it in this way, we can understand that there is a choice to be made.  We can choose to be negative and resentful of tribulations and afflictions, or we can see them as signposts and lessons to move us in the right direction.   

Sometimes things get written up in Scripture that are purposefully indirect.  Paul talked about his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).  We do not know what that might have been, though it is often speculated upon.  By being a little vague on the details, the Holy Spirit enables us to identify with the concept and accept our own humbling flaw – be it spiritual, physical, or psychological – as a thorn in the flesh as well.  We see how Paul dealt with his affliction – submission and acceptance after repeatedly asking in faith that he might have relief – and deal with our own problem the same way.

Elsewhere, we read:  And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.  And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.  So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas (Acts 16:6-8).   

I know that Paul and the other Apostles often heard from God fairly directly by dreams and visions, but I wonder about the means the Spirit used to direct these men to the particular town of Troas.  What happened such that, writing some years later, Luke could conclude that they had been “forbidden by the Holy Spirit”?  There is no mention here of a more direct revelation – though the vision known as the Macedonian Call is recorded in the very next verses.  Perhaps they were guided by impressions or maybe they just did not “feel right” about going a particular direction.  Maybe they received a prophetic word as Paul later heard from the prophet Agabus (Acts 21:10-11).

Any of those things are possible, but so too would be a course correction born of contrary circumstances, hostile encounters, physical hindrances, missed connections, or any other affliction that necessitated a change in direction.   For Paul and his traveling companions it meant going to Troas and across the straits to Europe rather than to Bithynia.  For us, it may mean a different job or career path than we had expected or a change in attitude or lifestyle. 

For most of us wisdom is not going to come from sitting comfortably in a comfortable room waiting for a nice dinner.  Transformation may happen in a cocoon but only after the caterpillar has consumed a lot of experiences and developed to the point where the cocoon can be created.  Right now God is teaching you and me His statutes.  All this crap that we are experiencing is infusing us with wisdom – if we are willing to receive it – and developing us to the point where metamorphoses can take place.  The grave is, of course, the ultimate (as best we know now) cocoon from which the butterfly may emerge in resplendent glory, but we have the potential for moving through stages within this life.  These transformations may not be objectively discernible or particularly radical.  That does not mean, though, that they are minor or insignificant.  When it comes to final exams, some of us probably just brushed up and reviewed while others crammed.  If you think about life’s final in the same way, a lot of stuff we see happening in and to ourselves and others might take on a different hue.         

The light of revelation does not illuminate all of the details in our path.  Its focus is upon the end -- perhaps it would be better to say that it originates from the end, splashing light back along our road home.  The shadows cast on this side of much that we encounter are deep and impenetrable, but the other side is well-lit.  The course is much easier to understand in the clarity of retrospection.  Sometimes, as we struggle with our shadows and mysteries, we must act with only a small lamp of faith in the darkness.   

God is good, always.  God does good, invariably.   We can pass this test.