The Fiery Oreal - Pt 2

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. (1 Peter 4:12-14 ESV).

Jesus pleaded with his Father, asked for a path without suffering, but ultimately gave himself up to the gracious plan of his Father in Heaven. Even in the face of death, Jesus trusts in the goodness of his heavenly Father. We can certainly see that in the suffering of Jesus, we have an example of trusting in the promises of the Father. We can also take heart that Jesus is able to sympathize with us in temptation, especially the temptation to bypass suffering. But mostly, we can take heart that our redemption comes through suffering, specifically, the suffering of Christ. The only way to glory is through the cross. Being baptized into the death of Jesus and that suffering, we too have the promise of the glory that He earned for us. The suffering of Jesus isn’t just an object lesson, but rather the very means of our salvation. In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis’ heart-wrenching account of the death of his wife, we see a Christian suffer under the weight of what he thought was undue and unnecessary, at least on a visceral level. He writes, “But go to Him when your need is desperate when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double-bolting on the inside. After that, silence.” And later still in the same work, with a Petrine flair, Lewis also states, “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course, it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.” Lewis told stories for a living, and in these stories, the characters were tried, tested, and suffered. Crooked pathways aren’t made straight without a struggle. But writing or reading about someone else’s suffering can be an academic exercise, and we can close the book at any time. The promise that we will suffer is perhaps the hardest promise in all of Scripture, but the suffering is not, in and of itself, redemptive. Suffering is the way of a broken world. But the God of the Cross has made sense of our suffering, and there is no shortcut. It is only through our participation in the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus that any of our temporal suffering can make sense. Look again at the meme I’ve chosen for today. It is a matter of life or death. Choose God and know life!