Suffering.

I think my nephew said it best when he put it in his child-like words,

 “For some reason I always remember the bad stuff, so much better than the good stuff.”

We were talking about memories and when he made this statement it brought it all together for me.   We were specifically talking about when our entire family went to Disneyland several years ago, and he got lost (for about 7 minutes). 

  So we all spent a zillion dollars to have a great vacation and spoil the crap out of our children and all they remember is the 7 minutes when Corvan got lost.

 We always hear the age old question….Why does God let bad things happen to good people? 

There are many things jacked up with that question, but my nephew put it into such a simple statement that made a lot of sense to me.

I began to think of the greatest joys in my life, like getting married, I remember many amazing things about that day, but one of my most vivid memories I have of that day was cussing at my sister, who was doing my hair, (just as the church secretary was walking in to say something sweet, I’m sure) and I was going a little bridezilla on my sis.

 (Ya, Sorry about that AGAIN Marlece). 

I remember the birth of each of my babies, but I hardly remember the details of each one, OTHER than I can give you a play by play of TRANSITION (the hardest part of labor) in each birth, what I felt and smelled and saw and heard..…I even have TRANSITION memories of the adopted children.  J

So I cringe when I hear Christians talk about our best life now, I want to puke my brains out.  I’m sorry to be so harsh…but if THIS is our best life NOW, then we are getting screwed.  Jesus came and died so we could have our best life with HIM later…He suffered on this earth, in this life, so WE, could have an eternal perfect life with HIM forever.

 NO SUFFERING or PAIN or LOSS, that is the life I have hope in and LIVE for!

 It’s not now, It’s later, when Jesus comes back to set it allllllllll right!

It’s a no wonder we see so many "Christians" either faking it, or completely bummed about life.  They have been fed the lie that we are supposed to live our best life NOW and we are supposed to pursue happiness and success, all in the name of Jesus,

 who suffered and died so we can live our best life NOW??

 No way!

 We get to live with the HOPE and JOY of knowing we are living now in anticipation of LATER.

Most of the time it’s really not our fault, we live in a beautiful amazing country and we live dang good lives compared to the rest of the world.  We can live in a way that we can protect ourselves from a lot of suffering.  We live in a country that has done a lot of things right and we have the freedom and opportunity to live without a lot of the massive amounts of suffering that a lot of the rest of the world lives with. 

We have food and we have medicine and we have freedom to worship and we have the awesome and amazing men and women in uniform to serve and protect us and our country and our freedom.  We should be so thankful and humbled that in God’s sovereignty and grace, He has allowed us to live in such a place.

  I can promise you that it was NOTHING you or I did right to make this happen for us.

  This is called the GRACE OF GOD!!!  

Somehow when and where we are born we don’t get to call the shots on that one.

It makes me think about James 1:27.

²⁷ Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep one self unstained from the world.

 I have been learning the deeper meaning of this verse.  I think this verse is about suffering.  You can’t throw money or a family or a husband or a 3 step plan, or even a Bible verse at an orphan or a widow in their affliction and make them feel better or heal their heartbreak.  I think there is a time and a place to provide allllll those things (maybe not the husband one,) but “in their distress, it says to visit them”. 

Maybe if we visited those that are suffering, and entered into that suffering and hurt with them, rather than trying to fix them, or their situation, we would understand the need, the desperate need for our Savior Jesus Christ our Lord, who came and took on unbelievable suffering for us that by HIS wounds we would be healed and by His death we may have life.

1 Peter 2:24English Standard Version (ESV)

²⁴ He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 

Why would God send His Son to suffer and die if it is possible to live our best life now with a few good thoughts and declarations and attitudes?  Why wouldn’t he send Jesus to show us how to do it that way? 

  I’m not saying we need to suffer and die….I’m saying in this life we WILL suffer and we WILL die.

  Suffering is EVERYWHERE, we just have to open our eyes.  If it’s not in our own lives at the moment, I can promise you it’s not hard to find and I would dare to say, rather than protecting ourselves from it, we should go and visit and enter in,

 because we will find out how much this world really needs

 Jesus!

This idea of waking up and having your perfect life in your perfect order does not work in the life of an orphan or a widow in their distress.

  I think we should wake up every day and rather than declare who I am and what I can do….we should declare who the great

 I AM

 is and what HE has done.

  We need to wake up, and rather than say how I am going to do better and have victory over this and that, I am going to declare how much I need JESUS and how I need more of him every single day, and how weak I am, but how strong the 

GREAT I AM

 is in me.

I’m going to pray and think less about me and who I am, and more about,

HOW GREAT THOU ART!