Something you should know up front about me: despite what a contingent of people I went to high school with might think [they missed the boat] I’m a relatively enjoyable person to be around.  Case and point: my wife and I are coming up on one year and she hasn’t yet tried to suffocate me with a pillow as I sleep - that has to mean something right?  Obviously I’m no social superstar or I wouldn’t even feel the need to write this paragraph but conversely, I could hardly be accused of being a consistent buzz kill - I say consistent because one must allow for those moments when the brokenness of my humanity breaks through at such times as [although not limited to] Monday mornings, traffic jams and after Colts losses.

I wanted to throw that reminder out there because this past week I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about suffering.  It has been a pretty sobering week at the church where I work at, this coming on the heels of a year where we have watched the people of our community battle with illness and death as well as financial and relational strain.  As the messiness that is life continues to pile up it can grow wearisome and that weariness quickly can become frustration leading to resentment.

It is easier to handle the idea of suffering when it is the result of our sinful choices and can be construed as being the consequence of action.  Then there is the subtle sense of heroism we can cling to when we find our suffering is a direct result of the fact that we follow Jesus.  But the suffering that our church has encountered for the most part this past year is not connected to either of these ideas, at least not as a direct correlation.  Our suffering has been the result of flawed economic systems, and the fragility of the human body, both physically and mentally.  It can be disheartening and tiring to us as we attempt to persevere.

It has been a growing year in the sense that we are learning more clearly what it looks like to rely completely on God - and He has shown up numerous times answering our prayers with blessings like healing.  But what about those times that He hasn’t?  It is this tension that I have been wrestling (and even preached about this past Sunday) with especially over this past week and a half.

I think we have to begin with jettisoning this subversive idea that somehow Jesus came to make our lives easier and more stress-free.  I’m not sure if this seeps into us because as we watch Jesus in the Gospels He leaves this wake of people fixed from illness and demon possession and hunger and even at times death.  But Jesus never says that if you follow Him life will get easier - in fact He says the exact opposite.   Not only will you live in a world affected by the brokenness of sin, but now you will also be hated for your faith in Christ, as He was hated before you.  So much for the prosperity gospel…

It occurred to me this week that in Scripture where we see Jesus intervening on the behalf of broken people, what He does for them is a temporary fix.  The 5,000 people will get hungry again.  The healed will get sick again.  Even Lazarus will die a second time.  Where Jesus heals, feeds, and casts out we are amazed as well we should be.  But when Jesus does these things they are simply a taste, a preview, a signpost of His Kingdom.  They are not the Kingdom itself.

Jesus didn’t come to make our lives free of suffering.  What he came for was that so when we suffer (note the use of the word “when” and not “if”), we are able to find meaning and hope in the midst of suffering.

Jon Foreman wrote this great article in the Huffington Post a while back and in it he wrote this: “Hope is believing in a world that does not exist yet, a concession towards the kingdom of the heavens.  To hope is to believe that life could be better.  It is ultimately our belief in this ‘unbroken totality’ that allows for the potential of tragedy.  For without this hope, tragedy is no longer tragedy - it’s simply expected.  Without belief that allows for a better world, the tragic is fact.”

Where Jesus shows up and does the miraculous we get to see a glimpse of the Kingdom.  But in the times where He chooses not to intervene, those times serve us as well - they serve to remind us that this is not all that there is; we were made for something more than this. This is not the final chapter.

This past Sunday I preached on the woman at the well (John 4) - in the narrative we find that Jesus does not fix the woman’s circumstances (she had been pushed to the outskirts of society by choices she had made [immorality] and by things that were out of her control [her being a Samaritan and a woman] and would have been quite alone) but rather what He does is takes her eyes off her situation and the broken system she finds herself in and points her towards a future kingdom of hope.  And then He uses her to become the messenger of this kingdom in her town.

I don’t know what the level of suffering is in your life at the moment.  Maybe you are right in the thick of it, or maybe hardships are a ways down the road.  Let’s not be afraid to call out to God for temporary redemption in the here and now - He is the only one who can do it.  And where He does, let us praise Him for His goodness.  But, if God chooses to leave us in our circumstances let’s not be consumed by our situation - take your eyes off your suffering and look forward, towards what He does promise us: a Kingdom that will last forever where there will be no suffering.  Look forward in hope and then in the midst of the messiness that is life, become a messenger of this Kingdom to a world that is in desperate need of hope.

Reg