Someone has observed that pain and suffering are inevitable, but misery is optional. The Bible bears out that what happens to us in life is not as important as our response to what happens to us. The apostle Peter wrote words of encouragement to a group of suffering Christians - "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials." Peter had just reminded them they had been "begotten again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1:3-6). Great joy while suffering grief and trials? Peter seems to agree that pain and suffering are inevitable, but misery is optional! Problems and pressures and pain and stress and suffering are not items we can delete from the program of our lives like we delete words or paragraphs from a document on our computer’s word-processing program. Some suffering comes packaged with life, and Peter advises at 1 Peter 4:12 that Christians ought not to be bewildered when the bowling ball of adversity and pain comes crashing into the well- arranged pins of our lives – "Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you." The pain Peter was predicting was to come from persecution. Peter’s message, unlike much preaching we hear these days, was NOT that they would have their best life now. And it was NOT that if they really have faith their lives will be all healthy and wealthy, or that God will kiss all our "boo boos" away. And Peter’s message was NOT that the big-bad, joy-devouring wolves of death or disease or accidents or heartache or disappointment or financial stress or family struggles would never come huffing and puffing and trying to blow their happy house down!
So, if Peter’s message is not that Christians are exempt from all life’s pain and problems, what is his message? Are you listening? His message is that people may hurt, badly so, and yet be happy at the same time! Not happy they are hurting, but in spite of it. And not the kind of happy found in a meal at McDonalds’s or a bank account that is bulging, teeth that are perfectly white, wearing a size 2 dress, or that the lab report came back negative, etc. The Bible acknowledges that pain is real – and painful! Peter admitted in the passage above that troubles and trials of life "grieve" acutely at times. But he also said it was for "a little while." Why can we be happy even when we hurt? No pain we experience in this life is permanent! It may stay for a long time, even until we die. But Peter urges us to look beyond the grievous things life can and sometimes does dish out, and instead lock on by faith to an eternal home in heaven! Stay tethered to a living hope – the hope grounded in and achored to the fact Jesus Christ got up from being dead! The Christian message is that life can indeed put the hurt on us, but can’t take away the happy hope inside us unless we let it! God is good all the time, and nothing bad that happens to us can change what Christ has done for us. Thanks to Jesus, Christians can still be happy, even when we hurt.
By: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN
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