Day 71: How Long?
"I am on the verge of collapse, facing constant pain....Do not abandon me, O Lord. Do not stand at a distance, my God. Come quickly to help me, O Lord my savior."
Anderson's lesson today focuses on those who are burdened with illness and pain. As a doctor he has seen many people who suffer from "chronic, debilitating, and progressive illnesses" for which there is no cure. The best he can offer them is treatment for the pain so that they can "live as fully as possible." I imagine it is very difficult for him to see such struggle in the people he cares for, but he never gives up hope for healing. He ends with "If you're suffering right now, I pray that God will lift up your weary soul and give you strength for the day. I pray you take each day and each breath with the knowledge that he loves you and that he is in control, even when you're struggling. Though healing may not be available for you here and now, hope is still accessible. If you trust in Jesus, one day, in the blink of an eye, you will have a new pain-free body, and the suffering and anguish of this world will be gone."
While I was reading, I felt incredibly thankful that I am not in anguish because of a debilitating disease. I watched cancer consume my mother and could do nothing to stop it. It was faith shaking for me. Unlike Anderson's lesson where often times the patients he has had have been "wracked with pain," yet their hope and faith in God remained "vibrant and growing," mine wilted.
March 13, 2017
Day 72: Faith to Heal With Spit, Mud Or Just Plain Words:
"He spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man's eyes. He told him, 'Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam.' (Siloam means "sent"). So the man went and washed and came back seeing!"
I had not really thought about this before, but in the above scripture, Jesus could have healed the blind man without the unusual method of mud and saliva. He could have simply spoken and his will would have been done. So why the mud and saliva? Dr. Anderson doesn't provide an answer to that question, but instead suggests that we "consider that Jesus may use unusual methods, tools, or people to heal [us]."
Today's and yesterday's lessons (plus some online reading) have reminded me of some problematic questions I and others have had as we try to walk with God. Questions such as: Why does God allow some people to be healed and others not? Why does God allow innocent children to get debilitating diseases and die? Why does God protect some people from incredible harm, but allows others to suffer greatly? Why would God save someone from a car accident, but not help Syrians who are fleeing from war? Why does God meet the needs of one person and not another?
Someone in a Facebook group I am in started a thread discussing her frustration with people who claim that God did this or that for them. "I needed a pen and when I looked down, there was one on the ground right in front of me." The person viewed the pen he had found as a gift from God. Meanwhile children are starving to death. Throughout the comments there were many similar stories shared. Minor, insignificant happenings of life being attributed to God working, saving, gifting. The people commenting were clearly as frustrated as the person who had originated the discussion. It got me thinking about times that I have done the same thing. For a moment I felt silly for ever having seen God working in an insignificant detail of life. I thought, perhaps I shouldn't say such things anymore, especially when there is so much injustice and evil in the world. Why should I think that God cares about the insignificant details of my life, yet ignores the most dire needs of someone else?
I'm not sure that we will ever fully understand why God does what He does, at least not as we remain here on earth. Billy Graham believes that "Someday in heaven we'll understand, but in the meantime we can only look to Him in faith and trust. If we don't, we'll only end up in bitterness, anger and confusion—and that's a dead-end road" (billygraham.org). Chris Russell, minister and author, believes that God heals, but "healing is not always the only path that He chooses for us. Sometimes His perfect plan for our lives is to allow us to suffer and experience disease, illness, and hardship. The reason for this is that He can often teach us things through suffering that we would never be able to learn through a book or seminar, or through comfort and prosperity" (biblestudytools.com). Though both authors try to offer an explanation, I imagine neither is satisfactory for someone who is suffering. It's easy to say these things when you are not the one affected, or when you are not personally in the middle of a crisis.
All of that aside, what other option do we really have? We have to trust. As Alister McGrath in Mystery of the Cross states, "Experience cannot be allowed to have the final word—it must be judged and shown up as deceptive and misleading. The theology of the Cross draws our attention to the sheer unreliability of experience as a guide to the presence and activity of God. God is active and present in his world, quite independently of whether we experience him as being so. Experience declared that God was absent from Calvary, only to have its verdict humiliatingly overturned on the third day." What I gather from McGrath is that we need to trust that God is present and active and that we shouldn't allow our personal experience or lack thereof to determine God's presence and involvement in our lives or in the lives of others. Our experience and perceptions are misleading. Just because we believe God is ignoring our needs or the needs of someone else, doesn't make it a reality.
Bottom line, we need to trust and believe—God will have the last word.
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