A Year Later -- Part 6

I told Joanna the other day, "I should get a bumper sticker that says, 'Spit Happens.'" Ah, yes, my sense of humor is rather twisted, isn't it? Yet, I've found this past year that while laughter can't take away pain, it does help keep our sanity in the midst of it. But humor in the midst of pain isn't my theme for today. My theme is--you guessed it--spit happens.

You've thought about it before and we've talked about it before on this blog, none of us gets through life without at least a few hardy doses of pain. Some of us escaped this reality for decades in our lives. Others didn't make it out of preschool before the onslaught began but young or old, hardship has its way of eventually finding us.

For whatever reason, I have spent the last year suffering in a public manner. Thousands know my story. To my great surprise, God has been using my public story in the lives of many who suffer far more privately. Many who have financial, employment, marriage, emotional or other personal issues often don't have more than a few people in their lives who know the real story. Largely, they suffer alone. These are the people most on my heart as I have written these blogs this past year.

My inability to swallow is just one of the many hardships I've battled this year, but in some ways it is the most constant reminder of my condition. Day and night the flow of saliva that refuses to go "down" but must go somewhere, tells me that I am far from well. I'm grateful for the saliva as I would hate to have the "dry mouth" condition endured by some, but I'll confess that I've grown weary of the constant necessity to spit. Some hours will go by with minimal and manageable need, but other hours (such as last night when I filled rag after rag) I am like an artesian well.

So I say it again, spit happens. But I'm really not focused on spit in this essay. I'm merely using it as an example of the hardships we endure. For you it might be loneliness, unpaid bills, chronic pain, etc. And this leads me to a couple lessons from this past year.

First, suffering enters our lives because we live in a fallen world. As an old-time Alliance preacher used to say, "It is right that things are wrong in a wrong world. It would be wrong for everything to be right in a world gone wrong." Since humanity rolled out the red carpet to sin and welcomed it into our world, suffering is a natural consequence. I repeat, it is right that suffering is present in a world that is polluted by sin. Suffering is part of the world we live in and no believer in Jesus—or anyone else for that matter—is immune from it. Jesus simply summarized it this way, "In this world you will have trouble (tribulation)." But then he adds, "Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).

Second, suffering enters our lives because it is one means by which the work of God is displayed.

"Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" the disciples ask Jesus. The man was obviously physically impaired, therefore sin must have occurred…this was the common rationale of the day. "This wasn't about sin," Jesus responds (my paraphrase). "This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life" (John 9:3).

I've had to ask myself repeatedly through the months, am I willing to endure this suffering in order for God to be glorified in new ways in my life? At moments the answer has been a resistant "No, I don't like this. I just want my old life back." But most days, by God's' mercy, I've been able to trust that God has greater purposes than I understand and if my little bout of hardship can be used for eternal good, then I will be a willing participant. As I said last week, I'll battle for a better tomorrow—this is not formula for fatalism—but trusting that God uses these kinds of plots to write great stories, I'll accept today.

These lessons are not new to you nor to me. I know we've heard these things before. But when suffering hits, they provide a foundation to keep us from getting knocked around too severely.

"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far out-weighs them all" (II Corinthians 4:17).

Spit happens. Glory awaits. Until then,

John