I don't know about you but I don't like pain. I don't mean the pain you get from a game of soccer where little fellows keep kicking your shins till your limping for weeks.I also don't mean the pain from the bruises you get from falling down the staircase because you have become too fat to keep your balance.I can handle those. I am not a wimp!
No, I am talking about Mega life pains.Death.Divorce.Physical,Emotional and Sexual Abuse of children and spouses. Widowhood. Rejection by family and friends.Persecution on religious grounds.Physical handicaps resulting from accidents.False Accusations. Paying the consequences of other people's mistakes.Chronic illnesses.War and Genocide. Crippling poverty. Racism and Segregation.Being misunderstood ....... those kind of pains.Who likes them? I surely don't!
When I first got born again, this pain and suffering business was furthest from my young mind. In my 8 year old cranium,God was Santa Clause. Keep up good behaviour and Papa Santa would reward you for your efforts. I liked the deal! Better yet, it worked! I was rewarded a lot for being a "nice boy". Then I grew up.
In my high school days, I noticed something different at play. All nice people were not exactly "blessed" or "showered with gifts" in my view. There seemed to be a lot of pain being dished around- and whoever was dishing the stuff out was not discriminating. It seemed everybody was getting their allotted share.Good and bad people equally got served some pain rations. Sometimes it seemed as if the bad guys actually got less while the good guys got the bigger portions! Then in college, I started thinking that if you worked hard and honest,God would bless you with lots of money and you could then at least use it to buy out a lot of these crazy packets of pains that kept showing up at peoples door steps. I know, I know, of course I was naive! Later on, I discovered money didn't buy away as much pain as it actually brought, if not more! I hadn't read my Bible very seriously by then. But then I started to. The Holy Book is littered with painful Portraits and Mosaics.Two of them really caught my eyes. The Jesus and Paul Mosaics. They left my mouth wide open! I stiffened and got a little scared.No, I actually got a LOT scared! I was petrified! I wasn't sure I wanted to be a Christian anymore! Where was the Santa I once knew? Wasn't everything supposed to be rosy and nice after I chose to be a good person? Was I blackmailed with empty promises when I was introduced to Christianity ? I was starting to think so!
Jesus and Paul. Well, if you haven't read their life story's on earth,let me just warn you that they are laced with fatal doses of pain.Mega pain! Of course I had read and heard of Job's story, but it wasn't till after re- acquainting myself with the Jesus story and the stranger-than-fiction life drama of Apostle Paul that got me looking at Incredible Job and Peter the Rock in a brand new light. But that was much later. At that moment, all I could think about was- "Jump ship now! Why should you suffer like this for like 7 or 8 decades? Gee, you might not even make it that long with this Jesus tag around your neck! You could suffer and die before your even 30!"What was worse, was my perception of the purpose for the suffering. " All this pain and for what? God's glory? Are you kidding me? Me suffer so that some Supernatural being can get a kick from it? Forget it!" I wanted out.
The motto "Let's drink, eat and be merry for tomorrow we die"- started sounding like the best advice any body had ever come up with since Adam!
But God in His mercy and Grace wasn't ready to lose this little miffed and self seeking worm due to some simple facts about human pain and God's glory. He just laughed at my tantrums and waited patiently till my little black head had stopped steaming, then, He graciously dropped a few grains of understanding to penetrate my thick skull. .... to be continued....
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