When I walk in public places, I find myself searching the faces of strangers, wondering what their tragedies are. We all have them.
Anyone who tells you life is a bowl of cherries, easy-peasy, cloud nine, is full of it.
That doesn’t mean life can’t be full of joy, but joy isn’t dependent on what’s happening to me. I can have joy regardless of my circumstances. I don’t always, but I can. Peace too.
Anyway, life is hard, pretty much across the board, for everyone. Don’t be fooled looking at people who seem to have everything that you wish you had. Look into their eyes, behind the stuff, and you’ll sometimes get a glimpse of the tragedy. And even if you can’t see it, it’s there.
We are an angry people. Anyone who spends five minutes in traffic can attest to that. Getting behind the wheel of a car gives us just the anonymity and the power we need to vent some of that anger on other anonymous souls.
We’re angry because we have a longing for eternity (perfection) in our souls, and all we have experienced is imperfection. We’re angry because we desire beauty and love and satisfaction, and nothing man offers can fill that desire.
No amount of money, no number of possessions, no conquest of the heart can fill that desire, and we are sorely disappointed.
The last several decades have been particularly godless and the fruit of that is anger. I think we’re making a turn back to recognizing true spirituality, which gives hope, but for almost fifty years children have been born and raised in hopelessness.
I don’t think this is the first such period we’ve gone through. It’s a cycle - we move closer to God, we move away, God calls a remnant to him, those that hear, and eventually many follow, then many fall away. So I don’t think it’s the end of the world or something just because there is so much evil and godlessness. We’ve had that before.
And we all have hard lives. No one is immune to this. Don’t let some starry-eyed evangelist ever tell you that if you just say the sinner’s prayer, all your problems will be solved. Untold numbers of souls have been harmed by this premise. Say the sinner’s prayer, become a Christian, happy happy. Then when the problems and struggles don’t disappear they either hate God or themselves and put on the happy happy mask and shake their fingers at others who are unhappy: you don’ t have enough faith.
Seems clear to me that Jesus told us we were going to have troubles. And when he went away, he didn’t say he was going to solve all our problems. He just said he was giving us peace. And he asked us to lay down our lives for each other. I didn’t hear anything about financial or physical prosperity.
So the difference between me and someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus is not that I have a tragedy-free life. It’s that I have a source of peace in the midst of my tragedies. I know that he has overcome the world and that I will overcome also and experience perfection. Not in this life - no one gets to have that. But when I see him face to face, it’s going to be worth it.
For my sake, he didn’t give up, through the trials, the persecution, the injustice, the hurt, the betrayal, the poverty, the hardship, the pain, the death. He persevered through his tragedies, and he overcame.
And for his sake, I won’t give up either. I’m not looking for financial blessing, physical health, to have my needs met, a nice, neat, bow-tied-on-top ending to my life or the lives of the ones I love, or any kind of security other than the hope that I have in him that it’s going to be worth it all.
And there is peace and joy in that, even if we don’t understand it. There really is.
Tags: eternity, faith, happiness, happy, Jesus, joy, life, peace, perfection, tragedy
June 24th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Tina:
Profound words…
To leave out the suffering and struggle part is to present an incomplete, even deceptive gospel. And it seems that trials in our lives have one of two effects. Either (1) we gradually begin to manifest the “peaceable fruit of righteousness”, or (2) we become bitter.
I have a grown son who recently recognized that, despite a zeal for God, he has never experienced God’s salvation. Christian associates and friends are totally baffled by this admission, because, for them, conversion has been reduced to a sinner’s prayer “incantation” which one may invoke at any time of one’s own choosing, regardless of whether or not faith is present. When the light finally does come on for him, my son will be stronger for having been through the struggle.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
The title is quite intriging…but then that is what keeps us reading.
TRAGEDY: Drama in which the protagonist is overcome by some superior force or circumstance.
As 21st Century Americans were raised to believe that “Life is Fair.” It is not suffering that troubles us,…it is Undeserved suffering.
Growing up, if we disobeyed our parents, we were punished for it. When that discipline was connected with wrongdoing, there was a sence of justice connected to it.
But when we get older, and we see there is no correlation between the amount of wrong we commit and the amount of pain we experience, it can be devastating. An even larger surprise can come when we do RIGHT and we get kocked down for doing it. Thus, the full impact, the large capital TRAGEDY!
For the Protagonaist, anger is only the first of many emotions, depending on the duration of the experience. For some the Tragedy proves lethal, life threatening, overwhelming, hope-less.
As one who has swam in these dark pools of dispair on more than one occasion, the last thing I needed was the know-it-all, answer-man, Job comforters who visited. Their advice hollow, superior, sprirtually presumptive.
We don’t like to see people suffer. As Christ-followers, we like to have answers to the Why behind suffering. The truth is, sometimes we don’t know Why. And it is no reflection on our faith or on God if we can’t speak for Him.
In the Book of Job, his friends tried to speak for God, presuming to know what Job’s sin was or that he was suffering for his pride and hidden sin. At the end of Job’s trial, God appeared to those friends and said….
(7) “After God had finished addressing Job, he turned to Eliphaz … and said, “I’ve had it with you and your two friends. I’m fed up! You haven’t been honest either with me or about me - not the way my friend Job has. (8) So here’s what you must do. … go to my friend Job. Sacrifice a burnt offering on your own behalf. … My friend Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer. He will ask me not to treat you as you deserve for talking nonsense about me, and for not being honest with me, as he has.” (9) They did it. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar did what God commanded. And God accepted Job’s prayer. (10) After Job had interceded for his friends, God restored his fortune - and then doubled it!
Those are sober, cautionary words to me when I speak to a friend who is going through the crucible of pain. I am more likely to weep with them than quote volumes of Scripture exposeing my ability for Biblical literacy, but lack of personal sensitivity. I’m also learning, by personal experience, that there are times God withholds Himself from the believer, not in punshiment, but in an act of love for the child who would seek Him and the treasure of His presence.
In this world of microwave, instant, credit card gratification, we have forgotten God’s delight is still in those who SEEK him.
Jeremiah 29:13 “And ye have sought Me, and have found, for ye seek Me with all your heart;” (The word “seek” means “search or frequent a place, tread a place”)
There is a dilligence implied. Something more than an infrequent, quick prayer fire to heaven at meal time.
If following Christ had been so easy, He would have never told the rich, young ruler to forsake all and follow him. We have forgotten conviently ” If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)
Taking up our cross daily may mean more than wearing a silver cross around our neck or putting the fish sticker on the back of our car and getting hasseled about it.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Your statement:
“So the difference between me and someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus is not that I have a tragedy-free life. It’s that I have a source of peace in the midst of my tragedies. I know that he has overcome the world and that I will overcome also and experience perfection. Not in this life - no one gets to have that. But when I see him face to face, it’s going to be worth it.”
is so beautifully put, and it’s a truth I wish more realized
August 11th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Thanks for stopping by, Kate. I admire your work to be healthy. I need to do that.