So I have been doing about 2-3 devotions a day over the last few months. It has been so good and sooooo needed. God has been teaching me that I need Him, that I can’t do anything without Him, that it is He “who works in me to will and to act according to His good purpose” (Phil 2:13), that He loves me and my family abundantly, that He has only what is best for us in mind.
One devotional I’m reading is C.S. Lewis: Readings for Meditation and Reflection. One of them was on pain & suffering (& its necessity? what?). But before I go there, I want to share another quote by Lewis, “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” That is change and transition in a nutshell for me. I know it will be good, and God has His best in mind for me and my family; and I am trying to trust all His promises for us, but my trust is still tinged with doubt sometimes (see Rachel’s recent blog on that topic).
Why? If the world was created by a good, gracious and almighty God, is there pain and suffering. Not surprisingly this quote comes from (1 of TWO BOOKS) C.S. Lewis wrote to try and address ideas people have about:
“The existence of suffering in a world created by a good and almighty God—‘the problem of pain’—is a fundamental theological dilemma, and perhaps the most serious objection to the Christian religion.”
So getting to a devotion I read this week (on Tuesday), it is worth meditating and reflecting upon….
The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; everyman knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt…And pain is not only immediately recognizable evil, but evil impossible to ignore. We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities; and anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speak sin our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His mega-phone to rouse a deaf world…
I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources.
But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that sup-ported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over—I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.
The Problem of Pain, Chapter 6, C. S. Lewis
Two weeks to go till I move, and leave my family for two weeks, to begin my seminary studies (10 weeks of intensive Kione Greek; they will follow me in four weeks) and everything I have known and come to love for the last 10 years.
“May the God of PEACE, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, EQUIP you with EVERYTHING GOOD FOR DOING HIS WILL, WORKING IN US WHAT IS PLEASING TO HIM, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”
Hebrews 13:20-21
“The LORD Himself goes before you and will be with you; HE WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU NOR FORSAKE YOU. Do NOT be afraid; do NOT be discouraged.”
Deuteronomy 31:8
Last weekend was hairy. And we are in recovery mode right now. It was a great weekend, and this week has been good too. But we have all been busy and we haven’t had much time to sit down, be still and rest, let alone try and exercise.
Church on Sunday, then out to Lake Freeman at the Leuenbergers and a restful and wonderful afternoon boating, swimming, and laziness. Then back home to baths & bed.
Sleep has been evading me over the last 4 weeks, only 1 sleep cycle (I like 2 [8hrs] or more); and therefore my emotions and thoughts are drawn to all the projectiles that the enemy of God is hurling at me (or whispering in my ear). I have to constantly find refuge in the sword of the spirit – God’s Word, and put on His armor that He gave us to wear, and pray constantly. I have also begun running and taking Melatonin in order to get more rest to be a better worker, husband, father, friend, and student.
Cup Overflowing 