When the Glass Breaks
Imagine yourself sitting on the end of a pier on a deserted Oregon beach. You are gazing out into the ocean, watching the gulls playing their games and gathering food. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and you can see for miles into the vast blue expanse. There is a gentle breeze lightly brushing your face with its cold caress. This is God’s creation at its finest. All is right with the world. You feel a light sprinkle coming as the first moisture dampens your head. Wait a second? How could it be sprinkling? There aren’t any clouds in the sky! The horror of what actually occurred strikes you. The gulls! Suddenly you forget the bliss you experienced just moments ago. All you can feel is anger or frustration or disgust. How dare those gulls ruin your day?
All too often our lives mirror the little analogy just told (which isn’t really an analogy since it has actually happened to me). Things are going the way we like them. We are comfortable and would be perfectly happy if things never changed. Then, of course, something does happen and our little glass bubble is shattered. The Bible tells us to be thankful for the rock that broke our precious glass sphere, but it is one of the most difficult things for a Christian to do.
As the religious editor for my college’s newspaper, I was required to write a weekly devotional and then submit it to the school chaplain for approval. One week I included a line about rejoicing in sufferings and he had it deleted on the basis that “no one can actually do it.” I was very tempted to give hem a three hour lecture on the Biblical basis for rejoicing in suffering from Genesis through Revelations, but I didn’t. (To this day I’m not sure if it was wisdom or fear that held me back.)
This event caused me to think. Why is it “no one can actually do in?” I hadn’t seen anyone lately who continually rejoiced in their sufferings. I know I hadn’t done it myself. Yet the apostles were able to do so. Paul could sing while being unjustly imprisoned. What was the difference?
The answer is stated clearly in the Bible. It is even right after one of the most loved passages of the New Testament. After the “Hall of Faith” lies a passage the modern church likes to ignore. I will write out Hebrews 12:5-11 since I know that personally I rarely look up a passage after an author cites it and suspect that many others are the same way:
“‘My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, And do not lose heart when he rebukes you, Because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punished everyone he accepts as a son.’ Endure hardship as discipline: God is treating you as sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”
The apostles and the writer of Hebrews understood something that we don’t today. These troubles are discipline designed by God for our good. The concept of “live troubles” as discipline is foreign to us, which demonstrates just how far we have wandered from God.
What we must remember is that God is perfect and we aren’t. We were designed to be sinless, but we messed up. Compared to God we are wretched, filthy, slime that have blatantly disregarded his perfect commands which were intended for our good. The penalty is death. Instead of death, though, God sacrificed His only son so that we could become joint heirs. Now instead of our relationship with God being creator and us the rebellious creation, it is father and children. What we deserve is to be burning in hell, but instead we are adopted children of the Almighty.
Our heavenly father, being Love personified, is not content to see us remain in our miserable state. He wants us to improve. He wants us to approach what we should have been. This is done through discipline. I don’t care what modern pop-psychology says. If you want your child to become a responsible adult, you need to discipline him. This is a concept God understands far beyond what are minds can grasp. Discipline is what is best for us and God exercises it on us in love.
As I stated before, the concept of divine discipline is foreign to us. This truth was never more apparent to me than one day my Sophomore year. I was in the student union with the person I probably cared about more than I ever have anyone else. She was going through a difficult time and I was trying to help her through it. After trying to explain how God could use difficult times to teach us and improve us and telling her that she should rejoice in these hard times, she exploded.
“How dare you insinuate that God is doing this to me! My God loves me and He wouldn’t do anything to bring me pain!” Then she got up and left, trying to hide her tears.
I believe that at the center of her misunderstanding was her use of “my God”. There is only one God, the God of the Bible. Although many say “my God: in the Bible, they are still referring to the one God and His actual attributes rather than some personalized God we design because we do not want pain. Nowhere does He say that he will not bring pain and sufferings. What he does say is that he will give us the strength to endure through the pain and suffering. The pain and suffering will remain, for they are for our good, administered by a loving Father.
Christians today get so wrapped up in the belief in the love of God that they forget what love is. God’s perfect love has been confused with the love found in cheap romance novels. God’s perfect love will not give us whatever we want whenever we want it. That isn’t’ love. It is somewhere between stupidity and hate. God isn’t’ stupid and he does not hate you. Although we may think we know what’s best for us, we don’t. God does. When difficulties come, the best course of action for the Christian is to not worry about the seagull who ruined your day at the beach, but to give the situation up and realize that it is from God and for your good.
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