Last week we talked about suffering and endurance. Joseph was given a dream of exaltation, and then his life turned upside down. He was not immediately rescued from betrayal, slavery, false accusation, or prison. He had to keep living faithfully while the outcome remained uncertain. We argued that although God did not intend Joseph’s suffering, He could still work through it. The suffering produced endurance in Joseph, and endurance taught him to keep living while he waited for what had been promised. In that waiting, his character changed.
But our larger question in this series is still: What can suffering do to faith?
We began this series with Acts 12 because it leaves us with a problem that is not easy to resolve. James is killed. Peter is rescued. Both are apostles. Both are faithful. Both are prayed for. Yet one comes out of prison, and the other does not. So what are we supposed to do with that?
Most of us pray because we want something to happen. We pray for healing because we want someone to recover. We pray for protection because we want someone to be safe. We pray for a job, a relationship, a child, a solution, a way out. There is nothing wrong with that. Prayer would become strangely dishonest if we pretended not to care about the outcome.
But then what happens when the outcome is not the one we prayed for? What happens when the person is not healed, or the door does not open?
At some point, the question changes from “Will God deliver me?” to “What happens if He does not?”
That question is much harder because it forces us toward the core of our faith. The layers of pretense, explanation, rationalization, and even past experience begin to fall away. We are left to confront what is actually there at the center of our relationship with God.
That is exactly the issue Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are forced to face in Daniel 3. Nebuchadnezzar built an enormous image of gold as a representation of himself and his kingdom and gathered the officials of the empire together for its dedication. He ordered that when the music began, everyone must bow down and worship the image. And almost everyone did bow down except for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who remained standing.
It is easy to read this story knowing how it ends. We know about the furnace. We know about the fourth figure in the fire. We know they will eventually walk out alive. But they didn’t know any of that. All they know is the command in front of them: bow down or be burned alive. Nebuchadnezzar realized that these three didn’t worship and gave them another chance and spelled out their fate if they did not bow down.
Daniel 3:15: Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?”
That second chance is interesting. Nebuchadnezzar is not asking them to change their entire lives. He is asking for one act. Bow once and get on with your lives, or else die a horrible death.
I tried to place myself in their shoes and ask what I would do. That is difficult to answer while sitting comfortably on my couch. It is easy to imagine courage when there is no furnace in front of me.
But if I were actually there, surrounded by the crowd, the music, the soldiers, the heat of the furnace, and an angry king demanding an answer, I am not sure my mind would even work clearly. I might simply bow down, survive the moment, go home, and then feel terrible afterward about my actions. Fear can do that to us. It can shrink everything down to the immediate question: How do I get out of this?
But Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego seem to have already thought about this before they stood before the king. Their response does not sound improvised. They knew what refusing to bow could cost them. That changes the story for me.
Their courage did not begin when they saw the furnace. The decision had already been made before the crisis arrived.
And maybe that matters, because suffering exposes the faith that is already there.
These three could have told themselves that God knew what was in their hearts. They could have bowed physically while refusing inwardly. They could have reasoned that staying alive would allow them to continue serving God in Babylon. They could even have asked whether dying over one public act was really worth it.
Those are not ridiculous arguments. When the cost becomes high enough, things that once seemed very clear can become negotiable. And the moment something becomes negotiable, we begin to see what we are really trying to protect. Our safety. Our future. Our reputation. Our comfort. Even our life.
That is where suffering becomes revealing. It does not simply ask what we believe. It asks what our faith is anchored to when everything else is being threatened.
And that is the question these three men are about to answer.
Notice another thing that Nebuchadnezzar says. “And who is the god that will deliver you out of my hands?”
That question carries a lot of history behind it.
Nebuchadnezzar was not simply some king threatening them with a furnace. He was the king of the empire that had crushed Judah.
Jerusalem had been defeated. Some of the sacred vessels from the temple of God had been taken to Babylon and placed in the treasury of Nebuchadnezzar’s god. These young men were taken from their homeland, separated from everything familiar, given Babylonian names, and educated in Babylonian language and culture.
Think about what Babylonian power must have looked like from the perspective of these young men. Their nation had lost. Their king had lost. They are captives living in Babylon. Their mighty God, who parted the Red Sea and delivered their ancestors, didn’t intervene.
Yes, they had seen God work. Daniel had interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. They had been given positions of responsibility. They had experienced moments in which God was clearly with them. But look at the larger picture. Babylon was still powerful. Nebuchadnezzar was still king. Judah was still defeated. And they were still captives.
So when Nebuchadnezzar asks, “Who is the god that will deliver you out of my hands?” he is not asking an abstract theological question. He is pressing on the apparent evidence right in front of them.
And this is where suffering becomes revealing.
As long as deliverance is still possible, it can be difficult to know what our faith is resting on. We may say we trust God, but somewhere underneath that trust may also be the expectation that He will eventually fix this, restore this, heal this, or give us the life we are hoping for.
But when that expectation is threatened, something becomes visible. We begin to see what our faith has actually been anchored to.
Was it anchored to God Himself? Or was it anchored to our expectation of God, to our idea of what God should do, how He should act, and what a faithful God should allow or prevent in our lives?
That is a much harder question.
Because sometimes what suffering exposes is not that we stopped believing in God. It exposes that the God we trusted was partly a God we had imagined, a God whose faithfulness was tied to certain outcomes.
And that is what the furnace is about to reveal in Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Daniel 3:16-18: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
Notice what they are saying. They have no doubt that God can deliver them. What they refuse to assume is that, because He can, He therefore will.
That distinction matters. Their own experience had already taught them that faith does not guarantee the outcome we want. Judah had fallen. They had been taken captive. Nebuchadnezzar was still in power. So, they were not changing what they believed about God. They were changing what they believed they were entitled to expect from Him.
God is able. But they will not turn His ability into an obligation.
This is a difficult thing to accept. When we pray for something for a long time, and nothing changes, it is tempting to measure God by the outcome. His silence can begin to feel like powerlessness, or even indifference. And once we start thinking that way, we naturally begin noticing everything that seems to confirm it.
That is what can happen when our faith is anchored not in God Himself, but in our expectation of what God should do. These three men are standing inside exactly that tension. They do not know what God will do next. But they refuse to decide what God is capable of based on what He has done, or not done, for them so far.
And that raises a very personal question:
Have I confused what God can do with what I expect God to do in my life?
The next part of their answer takes that question even deeper. They have already said, “God is able.” But if their faith still depended on the hope that He would rescue them, then the furnace had not yet revealed what their faith was truly anchored to. So they remove even that expectation.
Then come, for our lesson today, the most important words in the story:
“But even if He does not, …we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold.”
After declaring that God is able, they made room for the possibility that He may not deliver. By saying so, they clearly showed us that their faith in God is not tied to the outcome.
If God delivers them, He is still God. If God does not deliver them, He is still God. They refuse to make their allegiance to God depend on an expected outcome from God.
And that is where the story reaches the question we have been circling around. What is my faith actually anchored to? Is it anchored to God? Or is it anchored to my expectation of what God should do for me?
I think that question becomes real only when the outcome matters deeply to us. It is easy to say that God is enough when the thing we want is still within reach. It is much harder when the answer may be no. When the healing may not come. When the relationship may not be restored. When the future we imagined may not happen.
That is when suffering reveals the difference between trusting God and trusting an outcome we have attached to God. And I do not think that is an easy distinction to make. Sometimes what we call faith may actually be confidence that God will eventually make things turn out the way we believe they should.
But these three men let go of even that. They do not know whether they will live. They only know who they belong to. “But even if He does not…” Those words do not weaken their faith. They reveal what their faith is anchored to.
And maybe that is what suffering can do. It does not automatically create faith. It reveals what was already holding our faith up. Was it God? Or was it the life we expected God to give us?
I wish I could say confidently that, if I were standing in front of my own furnace, I would respond the way these three men did. I do not know that I would. To be honest, even as I say, “God, I want my faith to be anchored in You,” part of me is still clinging to the hope that He will answer the prayer exactly the way I want Him to. I doubt that my faith would ever mature like these three Hebrew worthies. I don’t know if we could cultivate such faith unless for the Grace of God.
When Paul asked God repeatedly to remove his suffering, God said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Maybe faith like this is not something we manufacture by trying harder. Maybe it is something grace gives us when our own strength is no longer enough.
So perhaps the prayer is not, “God, make me strong enough to say, ‘Even if You do not.’” Maybe it is simply: “God, if that day comes, give me enough grace to still trust You.”
Discussion questions
- What expectations about God are hardest for us to separate from faith in God Himself?
- Can we honestly pray for the outcome we want while also learning to say, “Even if He does not”?
Donald: I think another way of saying “even if You don’t” is a phrase that we’ve used in our faith experience for centuries: “Thy will be done.” I think that when we say, “Thy will be done,” we recognize that we don’t know everything. We don’t know why things are the way they are. And certainly, we would want them to be different, based upon the prayer that we would pray.
Certainly, this past year felt like a valley, and you prayed these prayers, hoping that they were earnest, and hoping that you could conclude with “Thy will be done” earnestly. And I think that when you have enough against you, it seems, or it’s pushing against you pretty hard, even “Thy will be done” is an answer to prayer.
David: The problem is, how many of us actually go through that fiery-furnace feeling? I don’t think I ever have. I’ve never been that low, and I think that’s probably true of many, many people. So are we somehow deprived by not having that experience?
I went for lunch the other day with an elder from a Jehovah’s Witness congregation, and he tried to convert me on the drive to the restaurant by telling me—and this is a typical Jehovah’s Witness story—that he came to the Witnesses through his brother, who had been a terrible young man who was into drugs and crime and all sorts of bad things, and who got to such a low point in his life that he was in that fiery furnace. He didn’t use those words; I’m putting them in his mouth. But he was in utter despair, and he had some brush with the Witnesses, and lo and behold, he was converted and became a good man ever after. And his brother, seeing that, became a Jehovah’s Witness too.
I’ve heard similar stories so often among the Witnesses—that they became Witnesses because they were at such a low point in their lives that they turned to God, and then good things started to happen to them. But again, my point is: How many of us reach that low point in life? And if we don’t, are we then deprived of a real relationship with God? I tend not to think so.
I do think that we all will approach that crisis at the point of death, which is something we all fear, and that’s when we’re in that fiery furnace. We’re going to die. It’s as simple as that, and we’ve nowhere to turn then but God, and most of us do, and that’s when we receive God’s grace. Some people may be lucky enough to receive that grace beforehand, but I think for most of us, we are never put into that fiery furnace until the end of life. We never suffer as much as they did. So Kiran’s given us a difficult problem today.
Reinhard: I think in our lives we may never experience a challenge so deep, so hard, as facing death. But from my own life experience and from people I know, there are some situations like that. I can recall my dad facing many challenges, to the point where he almost died. There was a time when a gun was pointed at his head, but I learned the lesson of his faith in God. He was not an Adventist, but he was very, very faithful and active in the church to which I used to belong.
I look at the lessons in the Old Testament. God deals, I would say, directly with individuals. Of course, the disciples saw Jesus, and they also went through tragic deaths. To me, the lesson Kiran mentioned about Joseph is that there are certain individuals where I think God took over the destination of their lives. Joseph was already given the dream that his brothers someday would bow to him, and I think God, in this case, had a certain plan for people close to Him in order to preserve all these witnesses, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
I think the hand of God is really with His people, with the people He works with to show His love. And the people He deals with really have a strong faith. Joseph, although he was suppressed by his brothers and sold to other people, and then faced the temptation of Potiphar’s wife, shows that some of His people really have good faith, strong faith, and believe in Him. That’s the lesson we need to see in Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. It’s the same thing. God gave these people to show that they really worship God.
To me, these are the models that we as Christians need to follow: that there is God, and everybody who turns to God—I would say almost one hundred percent—the way our life is going to turn will be good. Even though I have had a few bad experiences in life, I can see that God came to the rescue. God always leads to the right path. So as a Christian, I believe all these things.
If we are challenged like those in the fiery furnace, maybe we won’t have that kind of experience. But there are some experiences in life for Christians, and especially in certain parts of this world, even today, there is oppression, even elimination, even being killed because of their faith. I believe the lesson for us, since we are in this group, is to see that God leads us as long as we always put our lives one hundred percent in His hands. The way we communicate and get close to Him is by prayer and by reading His word through the Bible, and then, of course, perhaps some Christian literature if we want.
I think if we keep up our faith in Him, He will lead us. Maybe the temptation will never come to the point that we cannot handle, and at the same time God takes us out of a problem that may be too heavy for us, when the burden seems unbearable. So again, I think the faith of these people in the Old Testament is the same thing that happened in the past and is happening in our lifetime as believers. We need to stick with it and remain strong, believing in His power to lead our lives.
Don: In Mark chapter 2, there’s a story of a man with an infirmity who is being let down through the roof. He is undergoing a great deal of suffering. When he encounters Jesus, Jesus forgives his sins and heals him of his physical ailment, and thereby links the forgiveness of sin with physical healing.
It raises the question in my mind: Could suffering be a window on something that is happening spiritually? God’s grace is sufficient for us in our spiritual walk. Can we not see suffering as a demonstration of His ability to limit our expectations and cause us to rely on Him?
I’m not sure if I am making myself clear, but I’m thinking that simply because we have so little control over our physical bodies and our own personal suffering, it’s a demonstration of how little control we have over our spiritual outcome as well, and that God’s grace is sufficient for us in the spiritual realm. Grace is the antidote to the physical problems that we might face in suffering as well.
Donald: I would ask what is the relationship between being sinful and suffering? Is there a relationship? Is sin just happening and suffering a consequence of sin, or was it by the removal of sin that the man was healed?
C-J: No, there’s a book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I don’t think that’s a metric that God uses. I really don’t. I think God uses people in so many ways. Let’s take as an example the witness and testimony of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Think about all the people who were witness to that, who went, “Oops, I got this wrong,” and think about the testimony to oneself that God has enlarged your borders and your relationship with God, not through punishment but through benevolence, an abundance of revelation.
Again, we have a binary brain, but for me, every day I see that testimony played out. Just look at people taking their garbage to the street who live in horrible poverty and uncertainty: Will I have a roof over my head? Winter is coming. What provisions are available to me, and what is the process? Think about the family they’re born into, et cetera.
I look at the government of this country right now and how they equate who’s worthy of whatever. Even with Kiran, because he comes from a country with a large population, he’s penalized by years, by access. Each of us participating today—and I can’t think of anybody on this planet who hasn’t had to face this—can be identified as a good or bad person based on how society has judged us: through our faith, through our education, through what we lack, or through being born with disadvantages mentally, physically, or financially. I just think that God would never use that metric.
I think God is a God of generosity, and if He chooses to use a vessel that, by our human minds, is disadvantaged or undeserving, He uses that person as a testimony that this is temporal, and you have no idea what this person really understands that you know nothing about. We have an amazing God. And like it was said earlier, “Even if I burn in the fire,” that really doesn’t concern me. It’s tangential. It’s just temporary. God brought them to that place to be able to do that and to be that voice in the room. When they could not see God, they were witnesses for God. Pretty profound.
Donald: Another angle on this, I think, is just amazing to me. We arrived home Sunday night, and I was with the Bible Study Fellowship men Monday night. Here I am with you today, in a similar fashion, on Zoom and talking about matters of faith. I know this isn’t any representation of proportions, but it just seemed, even when we traveled—and we didn’t necessarily travel to tourist destinations; at least where we stayed quite often was where people lived—that Saturday became a day of uniqueness.
To find an Adventist church in Europe would be quite a challenge. But Saturday was unique, although not necessarily with the uniqueness that we traditionally have in our homes when we’re home. My point is the volume of people that we saw—hundreds, thousands of people—and what actually is out there and happening on Saturday morning. I don’t see it here, but there it was pretty evident that the family does something special together. Literally, you put the kids in their bassinets and away you go, and here comes a little band down the street, and let’s entertain our kids with the band that’s there and with the joy.
So I guess my point is that, with the volume of people, it’s not a matter of them making a decision against their faith journey. I don’t think they’re confronted with it. We went to many, many churches, but they are places where you take pictures. We did go to one Mass, and there were a few people there. We went in while it was going on, and so we observed it.
But I don’t know. Saturday is apparently a unique day for the family unit, and I don’t know how this fits in with what Kiran is saying, other than that these people were not suffering. Obviously, superficially, you’re looking at people, and maybe they’re suffering greatly, but they were trying to raise their families and their kids in a positive way, and it was so obvious that they loved them. Their sense of Saturday or Sunday was irrelevant.
So maybe—I don’t know—all these people in this crowd, “Bow down to me,” and they bowed down to it. It was no big deal. It was just something you do. I don’t know. That may not even relate to this conversation, but it was quite obvious that what happens on Saturday mornings is so different from what happens in our community and what we do. But it is a positive thing. It’s family-building, it seemed, and that was uplifting.
C-J: Our country is only 250 years old, and theirs are thousands of years old. They’ve seen multiple wars and borders change and horrible atrocities, and that’s in recent memory. They don’t take their freedom for granted. They understand that without community and family, you will not survive, or not very well. Life is fragile, and you need to embrace life, so music and dancing and bringing food and fellowship are core to survival.
It’s like in America: we just go into our house. We don’t know our neighbors unless we put forth the effort. We don’t need to. The colleagues we work with are transient. “I’ve worked here two years. Oh, I was just transferred,” or, “I want to try something different,” or, “I just don’t like it here anymore.” We’re frivolous. A lot of other people have worked the same job for 25 or 30 years, hated it every day, but it was essential, and they had no choice.
Americans are incredibly isolated and are given the narrative that we are exceptional, and that it means something in a positive light. Americans, when they step out of that, realize, “Wow.” I saw those pictures and I thought, I can’t imagine living in such a pristine environment that held the earth in a sacred space, that honored people, compared to a city that might only be 50 or 200 miles away from it. And so all things are not equal.
Our experience with ourselves, our experience with our neighbors, what we call our country, our home, is so diverse that we cannot measure ourselves by it. Our relationship should be measured by our relationship with God: the person we want to be, how we work on being the best person we can be in our relationships. But if I start comparing myself to other people, I’m on a slippery slope. I have to make my choice and work at it diligently, with humility.
Robin: I totally agree with Kiran. You don’t have that kind of faith. I don’t have that kind of faith. Perhaps no one here today has that kind of faith. But I do know who has that kind of faith, and that is my Savior and my brother, Jesus Christ, and He will give me a bit of His faith.
And so, yes, there are things that we can do to grow our faith, to remind ourselves of the promises of provision for what we need until the day that Christ is rolling back the heavens like a scroll and we can see Him on His way here. Until that day comes, for some of us, many of us, perhaps the only way out of here is death. And so I think I agree with David that that’s probably our biggest challenge, if we have the kind of death that isn’t like a terrible accident where it’s instantaneous. If you haven’t gone through the fiery furnace yet, that will be the time.
But do what you can to communicate with your Savior, and if we ask Him to grow our faith, He will. I mean, even the patriarchs—how many of them were trying to convince God that He had chosen the wrong person? But just making one step at a time, they ended up being champions of faith. So it’s not our job to worry that we don’t have enough faith, because on our own we can never do it by ourselves. But Jesus will fill us if we ask.
Don: I think Robin makes an important point, and that is that, from the book of Ephesians, it’s said that by grace are we saved through faith, which is a gift of God. It seems as if we’re always trying to hone our faith and to make it stronger, but really it’s a matter of accepting God’s grace as the gift, through the faith that we can appropriate with His help. And His grace is sufficient for all of our suffering, according to what He tells Paul.
Donald: When we were younger, I’m sure your church, as well as mine, always cycled about every three months to the need for a revival. We were told, “We need to pump it up. We need to step it up.” I don’t know what that actually would suggest. Did it suggest that we were in a lull, or was it just something that the church needed to do every so often in order for people to feel like they needed to go beyond where they were?
And I’m putting that in the context of grace. Where does a revival and grace—how do they fit together?
Don: I think when we’re talking about revival as something that we need to generate, it’s misguided. What we need is a revival of our faith, meaning that we’ve given the appropriate response to God’s gift of grace. A gift is not something that we have control over, but is something that is given freely. And all we have to do in terms of the revival is to accept that gift of grace, not pump it up—not pump it up ourselves.
Donald: But does that look any different? I mean, when our church was asking for a revival—you had revival tents and all the rest of it back in the day—what would that look like if the revival took place with grace? Would it look different from trying to appear more spiritual? Again, I’m not sure this fits anywhere close to where Kiran is going, but—
David: I take it as almost the obverse of what you’re saying about revival, which is suffering, Kiran’s topic today. It’s suffering that brings us back to God. And the church is saying, “No, we just need to revive our spirits,” yet it seems that the only way to revive your spirits is through suffering. “Blessed are…,” et cetera.
I’m sitting here smugly saying that I’ve never really suffered, but I did give testimony once or twice in this class about a dream I had a long time ago in which I basically met the devil and was scared witless, and God came and rescued me. That secured my faith and has secured my faith ever since. Did I suffer? Not in the same way as poor Anon has been suffering for many years with her cancer. My suffering of a couple of minutes in a dream was nothing compared to that, and yet that mental anguish in the dream was enough for me to receive the gift of grace.
So rejoicing and revival sound great, and it’s probably what we all want to hear. We don’t want to hear about suffering. But it seems suffering is a sure way forward. My question is: Is it the only way forward? If so, what are we to do?
C-J: I don’t believe that it’s the only way forward. I believe that’s a limitation that we have in this dimension, if you will. But I’ve seen people in prayer who aren’t in pain, just overwhelmed with the presence of a feeling of immeasurable love from God’s presence and being transformed by that. David danced before the Lord with all his heart. That was a revelation of—well, God doesn’t have a limit or a methodology or a rationale for who is deserving or undeserving.
I think God meets us where we are, with what we need. God reveals, for you, it was a matter of, “Prove it to me,” in your subconscious. Is there really an evil? God is the Creator. Okay, I can do that, but is there really a devil? Or is that just something that our brain imagines, good and evil, because we see evil expressed in the world?
I don’t think that God has a book: “Turn the page. Today, what is the date? Okay, I’m looking for these people.” I think God is present with each of us from before the foundations of the earth, and comes to us with what we need, and uses us for what is needed at the time. If there wasn’t a Nebuchadnezzar, then there wouldn’t have been an idol, and those three men—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—wouldn’t have been essential to who knows how many people who witnessed it.
We look at that and go, “Wow, that was really large in orchestration,” but I don’t think God saw it that way. Or somebody like a Judas, or the Christ. The methodology of God is not something we as humans can really understand—the grace of God, the magnitude of God.
Kiran: In the last three weeks, when we look at it, some suffering is for 13 years. I think in Joseph’s case he was suffering for 13 years. In this case, these three went through a lot, but this particular instance is a one-day thing. But the difference is that they have no idea they are going to be rescued. I mean, in this case they were rescued, but they made up their minds that they’re not going to be rescued, but they’re not going to bow down.
So I think suffering doesn’t necessarily mean everybody is going to go through the same thing, or we may have different kinds of suffering in our lives. But fundamentally, what I’m trying to ask is: What is the use of suffering in our lives? If it cannot be removed, what would it do to us?
God says that He’s like a consuming fire. He burns within us, and He’s not a consuming fire in the way that He destroys us, but He’s a consuming fire in the way that He removes all the things that are not good for us. So maybe suffering is like that—that it goes into the deep core of us and makes us realize who we are and what we are. Or maybe it reorients our vision in such a way that we see God for who He is, not actually as I expected Him to be.
I think we all start somewhere where we say, okay, we want this transactional God, like an ATM machine. God kind of goes with it for a while, but eventually, at some point, He has to make us realize who He is, and He’s not tied to the obligation that we expect Him to fulfill. I think that’s what I’m thinking. But I could be wrong, because when you read the Bible, whether it is the New Testament or the Old Testament, it gives the strong indication that God is a God of transactional faith. You ask Him, He’ll give it to you.
C-J: I tell people, when you have that kind of faith you’re talking about, it’ll come. God is provisional, but it might not look like you want or come when you want it. It’s just that God sees the beginning and the end, and knows incrementally, “Now I’m putting a new brick in this creation, in the wall.” I’m using your background as a metaphor. We are constantly being shifted so that we can see God as being multifaceted.
It’s like teachers. Some teachers aren’t good for me, but God put me in that room to stretch me and enlarge me. And so I think that when we stop looking at God as that ATM, or, “You said You’re God,” God is saying, “It’s not what you see. It’s not even what you believe. It’s that you’re willing to be that moving river. You’re willing to be that witness, no matter what, to affect change by the pathway that has been given you.”
Pulling up stakes sometimes is a mistake. You miss your opportunity, but God will cycle it back. “I’m out of here. I don’t want to be here anymore.” God says, “Okay, we can do it over here too.” We just really have to be clay in the potter’s hand, and not to wait consciously: “Is today the day? How many more days, Mom, before my birthday?” But to say, “This day,” as Donald described it, “will be a day of rejoicing and family and gratitude wherever we are.”
Carolyn has really helped me in terms of practicing joy. I can practice courage, but Carolyn has really taught me—and I’m still learning—to practice joy. And I use it in my prayers with other people now: “Lord, help us to practice joy and courage in our walk with You.” Every time I say it, the root goes deeper.
Don: Maybe suffering is like gravity. It’s a condition of the world that we live in, and there’s nothing that we can do about it. It’s a consequence of our sinful condition as mankind, and we also have no control over it. It comes whether we like it or not. Here I come, ready or not. It’s not something that we have control over.
But it illustrates, as I said earlier, the spiritual condition of mankind as well, and that is that we can’t save ourselves either. Just as suffering is not able to be managed and manipulated by our works, so our salvation is also not able to be manipulated or managed by our works. It’s a matter of faith that we don’t even have to worry about, because it’s a gift. Just as the faith is a gift, so is the grace a gift.
And when we suffer, we can be reminded of the fact that God’s grace is sufficient for us, and we don’t have to worry about managing our salvation, just as we’re not able to manage our suffering as well.
Donald: As I said at the beginning of the class, I would return to the hospital in which I was 42 years ago. If you want to find a building where everybody is suffering, the major players—the patients there—they’re all suffering. That’s why they’re in that building.
It was like going into a building with—I can’t describe it. There were hundreds of caregivers, between doctors and all the caregivers. You probably had a one-to-one ratio between the number of people suffering and the people attempting to alleviate suffering, to relieve it.
What’s the relationship between going to church and going to a hospital? I don’t go to church and think I’m going there because I’m suffering, but maybe I should.
Don: I think that’s the argument that I’m trying to make, not very eloquently, and that is that suffering is a window into our salvation situation as well. Just as we have no control over our suffering and have to rely on others to help us, so too with our salvation. We can’t control that, and we have to rely on our Lord to save us through His grace.
Anyway, much to think about. Thank you, Kiran, for your wonderful essay and for the provocative discussion. We’ll look forward to next week as well. Does anyone have a final comment?
Donald: Let me show you this one picture. It speaks to the idea of my place in the universe. I am sitting on a bench on a path created for such as me to be able to contemplate my place in this vast, majestic, unbelievable world of the Dolomites in northern Italy.
And just to speak to what C-J was saying, right around the corner, behind where I was sitting, was a bunker from World War I with a machine gun in it. This is where World War I was. I know this doesn’t quite fit Kiran’s topic, but considering my place in the universe, it’s pretty awesome that God would even consider my prayer, consider my suffering, consider my needs, when I’m really minuscule in the context of this earth, in the context of this universe.
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