They say that travel broadens the mind, it did with me. In particular, I have seen two equal and opposite responses to suffering. I was in China at the start of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, where over a million Chines students had gathered in Tiananmen Square to protest among other things the legitimacy of the one-party political system. I was visiting a couple of Mathematicians who remarkably had bounced back from quite severe malnutrition during Mao’s so called cultural revolution under which, for other reasons, they had also suffered terribly. During the chaos that lead to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, I was thrown together in close contact with a number of professors. When I found one of them quietly weeping in the corridor, he told me he was worried about the students. These men were so very, very gentle and compassionate, and they had become this way in their suffering. And it was after this experience where I formed my theory about the two ways of dealing with suffering. I have also seen a great deal of the other response!
If, in this age of Grace, I had been in any left in any doubt that in real time God rewards the good, and punished the bad, this would have dispelled it. In particular the evil perpetrated on the common people was, in real time, left unpunished. Certainly there is coming a day of reckoning, but in the meantime the goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering of God in withholding His hand of judgement, is designed to lead us to repentance (Romans 2:4). But have you ever wondered why, when my place in heaven is assured (1 John 5:11,12), that He does not immediately take us home, and out of this place of suffering? Well “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10). The prophecy is to the unsaved that “you too can be saved.” And the testimony of Jesus is that God is so good and so real that I am willing to go through whatever He calls me to go through, in the process be being made more like Him. What I am saying, is that it is our response to suffering that testifies (or not) to the reality of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
I am not saying that I have never struggled with what God has allowed in my life, nor that I have always responded well to the trials. But I have learnt two things. The first is that when I respond to suffering the way He did (see1 Peter 2;23), then what the Lord is doing is character polishing. Secondly I know that He does not call me to endure anything that He Himself has not already endured in spades. In fact “though He was a Son, He learned obedience though suffering” (Hebrews 5:8). It’s easy to obey when it costs nothing. And to come full circle, though He might well discipline me (Hebrews 12:6), I do not accuse Him of punishing me when I suffer, but I choose to trust Him because He has promised to actively work all things together for my good. And part of this is that He is making me both fruitful, and more like Him Hallelujah (Romans 8:28,29).
Father, I thank You this morning for all that You are, and all that You do. And I testify that it's worth it all. Thank You Lord that Your Grace is made perfect in my weakness, and in suffering. In Jesus Name Amen
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