PERSEVERE!

"Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but He will heal us; He has injured us but He will bind up our wounds." Hosea 6:1

I hate it when I sin against God! And I know you do, too! It is the pain that helps us understand that there's more to life than itself! Pain is good, sways us from things that are life-threatening. If I get a cut, no matter how nasty it is, quickly I take the piece of my flesh away from it and hold it to keep it from bleeding. Then I soothe it with some ointment and cover it with some bandages to prevent an infection. Then the wound heals, scar is visible for a while then vanishes!

What is interesting is that an injury that is serious leaves a visible scar as a reminder to learn from whatever caused it as a precaution that we don't do it again. Other injury that doesn't leave a scar often becomes a repetition, even though we learned not to injure ourselves again, we do it anyways!

It is the same with sin. Most of our sins appears so small that we repeat it all over again. But a sin that appears to great that it leaves a scar in your heart, it persuades you to refrain from such sin.

So suffering will always be in the world where we live. You may say, "As for me, I don't want it. Suffering, that is. I don't want to have to spend hours running from it. And if it did catch up to me, I wouldn't care to take any lessons from it. If the rules mean I have to go through hell to learn something, I'd rather just read about it in a book. Unfortunately, yet again, I am not in charge here."

Then God came near. "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains." wrote C.S. Lewis, and that perhaps is more a reflection of our human character than it is of God's best plan for reaching His creations (that's us!). If we'd listen to His whisper when everything was rosy, it wouldn't take a megaphone of pain to get our attention. But why and how He chooses even to speak to us in the first place still remains a mystery. And how pain could be His calling card - a greater one still.

Explain the Holocaust?
Explain the Twin Towers in New York?
Explain the Tsunami?
Explain our own pain we're trying to endure?

Did it make anyone strong? If it did, I can't imagine that it was worth the price. Consider this, "Surely he bore our sorrows.." writes Isaiah, and surely He did see suffering from both its side. As a man He walked and wept with every broken heart that met His gaze, and as a Messiah on the cross! We crushed Him! Our sins crushed Him. We crushed Him with our evil hearts! We crushed Him with every evil intention we thought and have done! He suffered and persevered from the garden to the cross! Instead of Jesus sending legions of angels to destroy us, He made us stronger. We killed Him and He made us stronger to persevere through our own trials!

God works in mysterious ways!