God, That Hurts! (January 22, 2006)

A friend of mine in college told me about the time an orthopedist manipulated his injured ankle while asking, "Does this hurt?" My friend said "YES! That hurts." Then the orthopedist kept right on working the ankle and my friend, thinking that the man was hard of hearing, said, "That hurts! I said that HURTS!" The doctor calmly responded, "Oh, I'm not trying to find out if it hurts any more."

My friend had assumed that the doctor was trying to minimize his pain - but apparently he had some other good reason for rotating my friend's foot like a corkscrew. My guess is that he was aiming at a more accurate diagnosis.

That incident came to mind when a devout friend wrote to me recently about some nastiness he was suffering. He understands that God teaches us things through our sorrows. Yet he wrote, "But sometimes I just want to say 'Enough already, I get it, I get it - there couldn't possibly be anything more I could learn from this pain.'"

I think he's right. Maybe there is still some lesson he needs to learn, but I doubt it. I suspect the reason lies elsewhere. In saying, "I get it, I get it!" he is probably like my broken-ankled friend saying "That hurts! That hurts!" - to which God might respond, "Oh, I know. At this point I'm not trying to teach you anything."

So what is God trying to do? I don't know, but it won't hurt to throw out a couple guesses - as long as it is understood that these are mere guesses.

Maybe your trial will benefit someone else in ways you could never imagine. I once wrote a whole Pastor's Page on this (“Do We Always Benefit From Suffering?” - August 14, 2005), so I won't belabor the point. But I know that I need to remind myself that even when my sufferings have been mined for all the possible benefit they can do
me, the divine drilling may continue strictly for the sake of someone else. Maybe if I could talk to God and say, "This isn't refining me any more!" he would respond, "Child, it isn't you I'm refining."

I wonder if the apostles of our Lord ever got sick of the beatings and imprisonments and death sentences and were driven to say, "Lord, is this really necessary? I think you know by now that I am loyal to you! These pains sure aren't making me any holier." But I don't think those sufferings were mainly for their sakes. They were for ours. To me one of the strongest evidences for the resurrection of Christ is the fact that the apostles were willing to suffer so much for it. That was unpleasant for them, but it is a constant support for my faith.

Another of God's goals when he keeps "twisting our broken ankles" may be to make heaven all the sweeter for us. I believe there are only two ways for a saved person to increase his reward in heaven: (1) Do good, or (2) Suffer a lot. The first factor is one we can control, the second is one that just kind of happens to us. I think that most of us know that we can make our heaven better by doing good, but maybe it is less widely appreciated that suffering (as long as we don't self-inflict it) has much the same effect. Jesus talked a lot about the last being first, the mourners being comforted, the hungry being fed, etc. Look at the story of poor Lazarus in Luke 16! A wretched earthly life yielded to a blissful eternity. Where grief has abounded, joy will abound all the more.

In the meantime, we just keep trusting God.

Helping Others When You Have Nothing Left (January 15, 2006)

Are you running on empty?

I suppose there comes a time in most people's lives when, in one way or another, they're running on empty - or at least on fumes. Maybe it is money they have run out of. They can't pay their bills. Maybe they have run out of patience for solving a domestic problem. Maybe their idealism has evaporated and left them cynical about doing any good in the world. Maybe their wells of creativity have gone dry (pastors know this!), and they fear they can't open their mouths without boring the bejeebers out of people.

I have a word for those who have nearly run out of money, energy, ideas, hope, or even goodwill: God may still require your fumes. He required the fumes of a desperate woman in 1 Kings 17. The prophet Elijah needed food, but God, rather than sending him to a wealthy patron with stockpiled provisions, sent him to a widow who had almost nothing. When Elijah asked her for bread, she explained that she had only a tiny bit of flour and oil with which she was going to make a meal for herself and her son before they starved. Elijah said, "Make some bread for me first."

That seems so wrong. Wouldn't it have been better to say, "Terribly sorry. I'll go beg elsewhere - enjoy your last meal"? But Elijah was just being obedient. In verse 9 God had told him that he had commanded this woman to feed him. It pleased God to supply Elijah's need from the near-empty cupboard of a miserable widow who was waiting to die. Then, of course, it pleased God to replenish her stock with just
enough food to feed Elijah, her boy and herself till relief came.

Sometimes our cup is filled to overflowing; sometimes there is just a bare runnel of fluid that will hardly collect to a single drop. But that drop is precious in the eyes of God when shaken out onto the tongue of a thirsting soul. Maybe it is the word of encouragement you give to a grieving spirit just before you retreat to your own room to cry your eyes out. Maybe it is the support check you write to a missionary that drops your own balance to zero. Maybe it is the favor you do for somebody that eats up the last minute of your available time.

What a humbling experience it has been for me to discover that some need of mine was supplied by an exhausted individual giving the last he or she had. And what a boon to faith it has been when my own hopeless fumes gave hopeful encouragement to some needy Elijah. Some varieties of God's grace seem only to abound when our resources most severely abate.

God still has good use for your near-empty tank.

Sinners Are Boring (January 8, 2006)

Evil gets dull after a while.

I mulled this over recently when I read Walter Scott's answer to a Parade reader who asked, "Is it my imagination or has "Desperate Housewives" become boring?" Scott answered, "If anyone's imagination is failing, it's not yours; it's that of the writers of 'Desperate Housewives', who've run out of ideas about how to keep five monotonously promiscuous suburban women fresh and entertaining."

I've never seen "Desperate Housewives", but I have no doubt that the reader's evaluation and Scott's analysis are correct. Evil, whether in the form of promiscuity or any other vice, just doesn't have staying power. After it entices and entraps, it bores.

One fine fall afternoon 20 years ago I sat in the Quad of the University of Illinois and overheard a conversation between two students about the upcoming parties that weekend. It was unbearably sad. These two had evidently partied themselves out, and their conversation turned into a grim analysis of how pathetic and disappointing the weekend's gatherings would be. But they would probably go to them all the same.

I once saw a snippet of an interview with a man - I think he was the manager of a Las Vegas show - whose job included the regular evaluation of bare-breasted young dancers. Certainly that's the dream job of any reprobate male, but he intoned lifelessly to the interviewer, "To me this is like mixing cement."

It probably wasn't like mixing cement the first few times. But my guess is that it got old quicker even than literal cement mixing, which, if done diligently for the sake of building roads and homes while providing work for a man's body and sustenance for his family, would eventually bring more satisfaction than constant breast-gazing.

Virtue is the winning tortoise to vice's spent and exhausted hare. Read a novel like Leif Enger's Peace Like a River (I'm trying to get everybody to read it) and notice how the holiest character (the father, a janitor) is also the most compelling. The same goes for The Chronicles of Narnia with its diamond stars Lucy, Reepicheep, Puddleglum and of course Aslan. Take any George MacDonald novel and the same pattern holds. Evil is a shallow puddle whose resources are soon sucked dry; goodness is an ocean whose bottom you cannot sound and whose farthest shore you cannot reach.

I am certain the writers of "Desperate Housewives" would take no counsel from me, but I think I can solve the riddle of "how to keep five monotonously promiscuous suburban women fresh and entertaining."

Easy. Get them to repent.