Month: March 2022

The Joy of Suffering

Once upon a time, in the side of a mountain far away, there was a huge cave. Now this was not just any normal cave in any normal mountain, but a very special cave. It was called, “The Cave of Joy.” The cavern was huge, rising up with a vaulted ceiling like some great cathedral, with light streaming in through overhead holes like skylights. Inside this huge cave there were large basins of stone, arranged in a large circle, each filled with what looked like sparkling, pure water. Before each basin was a sign, carved in all the languages of the world, telling what was inside that basin. In the very center of the room was a single stalagmite, on which rested a dove.

Most of the animals didn’t even know that the Cave of Joy existed, let alone know the way to get there. Most just spent their lives wandering around the mountain or flying past it, unaware of the cave or the joys it held. Only when the dove cooed would some hear its call, and respond to the invitation to come to the cave.

And so it happened one day, that the dove sang out its invitation, and its call was heard by a sparrow flying by. The sparrow had never heard any call so sweet, so it turned in the air and followed the beckoning call straight to the cave’s entrance, landed, and walked inside. It went right to the center to stand before the dove, marveling at the peacefulness of the cave and the ring of basins surrounding it. The dove welcomed the sparrow and said, “We’ve been waiting for you for a long time. Around you are basins filled with all the joys the heavens can offer. Help yourself and drink deeply of them.”

The sparrow turned and hopped over to the first basin, and read the sign before it, and since it was in all the languages of the world, including Sparrow, that bird could understand. The sign read, “The Joy of Forgiveness.” The sparrow drank, and was filled with joy at knowing its sins were all forgiven. The next basin was “The Joy of Eternal Life”, and drinking from that, the sparrow rejoiced at knowing that it would live forever. Next, “The Joy of Fellowship” with those who had already come to the cave, then “The Joy of Praise” and the sparrow sang out with a song louder and cheerier than it had ever sung, joined by the cooing of the dove.

And so it went, the sparrow drinking from the various basins the sweet waters of joy, until it came to the final basin, and there it stopped. The sparrow read the sign out loud: “The Joy Nobody Wants,” and then turned with a puzzled look on its beak, and asked the dove, “What is this?” The dove replied, “Just what it says. The Joy Nobody Wants is the Joy of Suffering.”

The sparrow asked, “Does anyone ever drink from it?” “Oh yes,” said the dove. “Eventually, everyone does. But most hesitate, like you; only a certain Lamb came and drank fully of it without hesitation.”

The sparrow considered the dove’s words, and though it couldn’t understand how joy could come from suffering, it reasoned that the sign “Joy” must be true, and so the sparrow landed on the rim of the basin and drank of the water of “The Joy of Suffering.”

What a mistake! The water was bitter and burned in the mouth, and at once the bird’s little stomach began to hurt. It couldn’t understand how the sign had promised joy, when there was nothing enjoyable about it. The sparrow hopped off the basin, bid the dove goodbye, and took off flying for the cave’s entrance. But instead of flying straight and clean through the air, the sparrow somehow veered off to one side and smashed into the cave wall, breaking one wing. Now it couldn’t fly! So instead of soaring out into the sky, the injured bird had to hop and walk slowly and painfully down the mountain.

And so it did, looking up occasionally to see other birds flying overhead, soaring effortlessly in the sky. “Why me?” the sparrow asked, “Those birds don’t even know about the Cave of Joy! How come they’re flying free and happily while I’m down here, hurting and broken?” But even as it asked those questions, the other Joys came to mind, and the sparrow felt less and less sorry for itself, and more sorry for the birds who didn’t know about the Cave of Joy.

After a couple long, painful hours of hopping down the mountain, the sparrow came upon a nest of chickadees – or what had been a nest; the nest had been raided by blue-jays and most of the sticks and grasses had been taken by the jays for their own nest. The two chickadees sat despairing, until the sparrow came up and offered to help. “What can you do? Your wing is broken! And why do you want to help us when you’ve got your own problems?” The sparrow replied, “Because I’ve learned about the Joy of Serving Others.” And with that, the sparrow told them about the Cave of Joy, and urged them to follow the call of the dove when they heard it. The chickadees rebuilt their nest with the help of the sparrow who couldn’t fly but could pull up grass and weeds for them to use. The job finished, the sparrow continued on

Further down the mountain, the sparrow came upon a crow, sitting by the path. It too had a broken wing, having been shot by a near-sighted duck hunter. The crow had its head in its one good wing, crying over its fate. “Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Now, I’ll never fly again!” The sparrow spoke gently to the crow, “Don’t take it so hard! There is hope you know, and you’re still alive!” Without looking, the crow complained, “That’s easy for you to say!” But the sparrow answered, “Yes it’s easy, but not for the reason you think.” The crow looked up and was astonished to see the broken wing of the sparrow, and for the next hour the crow listened attentively to the sparrow’s story of the cave, even as the sparrow helped to patch its wound. “Do you think I can go there, too?” asked the crow. “I’m sure you can; every language was there, even crow! Just listen for the call of the dove.” And with that, the sparrow continued its journey, filled with the Joys of Witnessing and Friendship.

By now, the sparrow was very hungry. It hadn’t eaten all day, and its stomach growled with pain. So what should the sparrow encounter next but a mother robin standing next to a pile of delicious, writhing worms. I don’t know if sparrows really drool, but if they do, this one did! But then the robin asked it, “Please kind sparrow, guard these worms for me while I fly one to my babies in the nest! If I leave them unguarded they might get away or be snatched by someone else.” The sparrow considered its own hunger, but then thought, “I’ve endured the pain in my wing all day, certainly I can suffer hunger for the sake of those baby birds.” So the sparrow agreed and stood watch, and not one of those delicious, wiggling worms got away – nor did any end up in the sparrow’s hungry belly. Yet, through the pain of the hunger, the sparrow felt the Joy of Giving, and knew it was sweeter than the Joy of Receiving.

Finally, as the sun was about to set, the sparrow arrived at a rock from which it could see its home valley just before it. It would be good to get home, and what an adventure it had to tell to its family and friends. What joys it had learned in that Cave! But even as it pondered what had happened, it realized that if it had not drunk from the Joy of Suffering, it would not have broken its wing, and therefore would have flown out of the cave and into the sky, high above those other birds who were struggling on the ground. It would never have known them or the Joy of Serving Others. They would not have heard about the Cave of Joy and the Dove’s call, or might not have believed it, unless one sparrow with a broken wing had endured its own suffering to reach out to them. And so the sparrow knew deep in its heart, the “Joy that Nobody Wanted,” was the “Joy of Suffering.”

What happened next? I don’t really know. Some say the wing healed miraculously at that moment, and the sparrow returned to the air with the “Joy of the Creator’s Power.” Others say the sparrow just hopped on home and lived a life of quiet testimony. But others say the sparrow came upon a nest of baby killdeer in danger of a hungry fox, and that it gave its life, using its broken wing to lure the fox away, and showed the Joy of No Greater Love.

——–

Of course, this story is not about a bird – it’s about you and me. You and I are called out of the world by the Holy Spirit to believe in Jesus Christ and receive the joy and the reality of forgiveness, fellowship with other believers, and eternal life. We do live a life of joy, because we know God through his Son, and have the assurance of unending joy to come in the presence of our Creator.

But as the dove warned, all of us drink of the Joy of Suffering sooner or later. In fact, the Bible says that it is a characteristic of the Christian life that we suffer. We suffer from illness, accident, and evil actions by other people; we suffer from our own mistakes; and because of love, we suffer for other people as we grieve with them, share their burdens, and sacrifice ourselves to show the love of Jesus Christ.

Yet though we do suffer, we are not defeated. Instead, we are called to rejoice in our sufferings for what the Lord can do through them. In Romans 5:3 the Apostle Paul says that we rejoice and even boast in our sufferings, because the Lord will use our suffering to produce perseverance in us, and from perseverance, character, and from character, hope. As we endure hardships and pain, the strength of our faith and character is revealed, to us as well as to others. We all know people who have endured suffering far greater than we can imagine – yet they gave testimony to the love of Christ and the power of God through their suffering: a woman who on her deathbed praised God for allowing her family to see her faith through her suffering; a man who died of cancer, yet at peace, while his family was amazed at the new, loving and peaceful man he had become after receiving Christ just weeks before his death; and the modern day martyrs imprisoned and murdered for Christ.

Whatever suffering you are experiencing now, or may in the future, remember the apostle Paul. Consider everything he went through – we heard the list from 2 Corinthians – floggings, beatings, stonings, shipwrecks, imprisonment, hunger and thirst, and finally, being beheaded for his faith – and then remember what he said about suffering: that we rejoice in them.

Remember too our Savior, the Lamb who drank deeply from the Joy of Suffering, who took upon himself incredible suffering for your sake and mine, that we might have the Joy of Eternal Life.

And about that sparrow – Jesus taught us that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father knowing it, and that you and I are worth much more to God than any sparrow! No grief, no pain, no suffering escapes our Lord. Nor does he allow us to go through it alone.

Now, may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: Job 2:1-10; Romans 5:1-5; 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

Deliver Us From Evil

There is a famous line from Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, in which Marc Anthony speaks at the recently murdered Caesar’s funeral. He begins his eulogy with the words:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones;

In his speech, Anthony cleverly turns what he says about the evil that Caesar had done, to a condemnation of the evil that the murderers had done in killing Caesar. No one is free of guilt; all are evil in one way or another.

Though probably not on purpose, Shakespeare’s lines echo what Scripture claims: “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. . .” (Romans 3:23). Sure, we all sin, but what about real evil? Does it really exist, or is it just the clever wording of a long-dead poet whose works were not “interred with his bones”?

Let me see. . . is there evil in the world today? How about Russian troops attacking Ukraine, bombing its cities and killing its civilians? Or, what about our country killing babies before they’re born, in the name of “reproductive rights”?* Or the U.S. droning an innocent man and his son during the pull-out from Afghanistan? Or elected leaders who lie and enrich themselves at the expense of those who elected them to office? Or drive-by shootings that kill bystanders along with their targets? Or mobs that loot stores with impunity? Or insurance companies that find loopholes to not pay claims? Or businesses that gouge their customers with inflated prices? Or people who abuse children, spouses, or the elderly? Or gangs who sell drugs that kill or leave users homeless? Or. . . or. . .or. . .

I could go on, and so could you. There is much evil in the world today, as there has been since the first humans took that bite from the forbidden fruit so long ago. We are reminded of the words of Genesis 6:5,”The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Evil is real, and its effects do live on after the evil has done its worst. People are harmed, societies crumble, and even nature is diminished by what people do. God warned Adam not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; before Adam and Eve ate of its fruit they knew good, but ever since they ate, they and we have known evil as well (Genesis 2:16-17).

 The Bible does not shy away from the reality of evil. It speaks of it some 539 times, including in the prayer our Lord Jesus taught us to pray, “. . . and deliver us from evil.”

What is the evil of which the Lord spoke? I can think of three ways our prayer for deliverance applies:

1. It is a prayer for protection from the bad things other people do to us, whether intentional or not, and from the dangers of the natural world. It could be a robbery, an assault, a car accident, infidelity, a flood, tornado, or earthquake; in other words, anything that would harm us. Just because we didn’t cause what hurts us doesn’t mean we won’t be harmed. We look to God to deliver us from all such evil events.

2.  The word “evil” in the Lord’s Prayer can also be translated, “evil one,” meaning we are praying for God to protect us from Satan. Evil is not just a term we use to refer to unhappy events; it also applies to a spiritual being, to the one who first tempted Eve and Adam to sin and who desires our destruction. Satan has been active in the world since the beginning, destroying people’s lives through his lies. In fact, Jesus called him “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Peter says of him in 1 Peter 5:8, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Fortunately, Satan and his demons are not omnipotent gods; they can only do what God allows them to do, so we pray for God to protect us from them. (See Job 1:6-12, where Satan needed Gods permission to afflict Job.) Satan tempts us to do evil, beginning with separating us from God’s Word (Luther).

3.  Unfortunately, there is another source of evil, and that is us. As fallen, sinful creatures, we don’t need the devil to harm us or lead us astray. We can do that quite well all by ourselves. We are especially adept at rationalizing our evil actions – “I deserve this,” or “They have insurance,” or “They had it coming!” or “It’s just a white lie,” or “No one will know.” Jeremiah 17:9 proclaims,  “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Or as Walt Kelly put it in his 1970 cartoon, Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” That’s why the Lord’s Prayer also contains the petition, “And lead us not into temptation”; we are asking God to keep us from doing evil ourselves by giving in to our wrongful desires.

This three-fold problem has been called, “The world, the flesh, and the devil,” first described by Thomas Aquinas in the 1500s as “implacable enemies of the soul,” though also seen in the temptations which the devil threw at Jesus in the wilderness: 1. gaining the kingdoms of the world by tempting God (the world); 2. satisfying his hunger by turning stones to bread (the flesh); and 3. worshiping Satan (the devil). See Luke 4:1-13. Jesus refused to give in to any of  those temptations, preserving his sinless nature and thus his ability to take our sins upon himself at the cross.

Jesus remained sinless, but we are inherently sinful, so what do we do about sin and the evil it causes?

1. As Jesus told us, we pray for deliverance from evil, and from the temptations to think and commit evil ourselves. We need God’s help!

2. We resist Satan. James 4:7 says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

3. Read the Scriptures, so you know what God considers right and wrong. This makes it harder to rationalize our actions as “not so bad.” or “I’m only human” when we see that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

4. Remember the promise of 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” When you feel tempted to do wrong, look for the way of escape God provides you.

5. Psalm 34:14 says, “Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” Don’t put yourself in situations where you know you will be tempted; seek what is good and wholesome. Guard your thoughts: as Philippians 4:8 tells us, Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” In other words, get your mind out of the gutter!

But what if we do these things, and evil still comes our way? Romans 12:21 says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Our Lord said, “But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39) and also “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44), a lesson repeated by Paul: “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all” (Romans 12:17). This is not to say we must let evil have free rein in the world, it does have to be opposed and stopped; the point is that we are not to stoop to the level of the evildoers, but to recognize them as people who are also loved by God.

Ultimately, our deliverance from evil has been provided for us by Jesus Christ, who died on the cross so that the evil we have done will not “live after us” into eternity. We not only have the strength of the Holy Spirit now in this life to resist sin, but also have full forgiveness of all our sins and the evil they cause, for all eternity. That is our hope, and we look forward to the day when evil is banished and only good remains.

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: Job 1; John 8:34-47; Romans 12:9-21. 

* 41.9 million since the Roe v Wade decision in 1973.