Skip to main content

Troubles?


Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)

It’s easy to think that if God loves us, we shouldn’t face trouble or hardship. Life should be straight-forward, easy, and under control. Persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword just don’t fit in the picture. It’s an old idea. What goes around, comes around. Karma. If bad things are happening in your life, it must be because you deserve it. Job had friends who insisted that he had to be a scoundrel beneath his oh-so-pious clothes, because otherwise why would God take his property, his family, and his health? When the disciples encountered a man born blind, they wanted to know who had sinned: the man or his parents?
          What God says is that all those bad things that happen to good people? They aren’t an indication that God is angry with us. I like stories of people who have overcome. Have you ever met someone who overcame without having any struggles to overcome? Have you met someone who conquered without any resistance? Can someone actually win without doing anything?
          If you listen to authors like Dean Koontz, the way to write a great story is to plunge your characters into trouble on the first page. Everything they do to solve their problem or get out of trouble fails until at long last, they come to that all-or-nothing point where somehow, they must overcome the problem. In God’s telling of that story, as with many other tellings, the problem to be overcome led to the death of the Hero, which He overcame. We aren’t the hero of the story, but if our own stories were without problems, challenges, or dangers, what the Hero did wouldn’t matter much. Our part in the story would include no victories.
          We might be miserable failures, because otherwise we couldn’t be great victors. Were there nothing to overcome, we could do nothing but fail. One of our victories involves changing our attitudes about troubles, to trust God’s love for us in them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Think About These Things

                 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Philippians 4:8) This passage is a major challenge for me. Like everyone else, I struggle to keep my thoughts from wandering off into the weeds, then wondering what possible benefits those weeds might have… Sigh. But as a writer, I have to delve at least a little into the ignoble, wrong, impure, unlovely, and debased. After all, there’s no story if everything’s just as it should be and everyone’s happy. As Christians, there are times when we need to deal with all the negatives, but that makes it even more important that we practice turning our minds by force of attention to what is noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. It’s just too easy to get stuck in a swamp. With my...
1 comment
Read more

Higher Thoughts

  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the  Lord . “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)           The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,   for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord      so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:15-16) If you read about the ancient gods of the various peoples, you’ll find that they think just like people. In fact, they think just like the sort of people we really wouldn’t want to be around. They think like the most corrupt Hollywood producer or, like hormone overloaded teens with no upbringing.   It’s embarrassing to read. I have a friend who argues that because God is not just like us, He is so vastly dif...
2 comments
Read more

Pure...

            The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (I Timothy 1:5)   I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15-16) I’m probably cheating - or mishandling the Bible, but earlier I was thinking about love being pure and purifying. And hatred being pure and purifying. And anger…joy…patience… fear… jealousy… courage…lust… and other strongly felt feelings, attitudes, and beliefs. Today’s verse brings purity and love together, so it’s the verse of the day, but it’s not really the focus. That means my motive for sharing it with you probably isn’t pure. As you read through my list, you   probably thought, “Yeah” about some, and “What’s she on?” about others. But consider how much hatred, a...
Post a Comment
Read more