Sometimes in our afflictions we may feel lost, confused, and uncertain of ourselves. We dare not doubt God’s love for us, though we may wonder how He might use such affliction to mend our hearts… As C.S. Lewis once said, “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be” (Letters: 1964). There is a trust issue in suffering, and an intimacy that comes through its fires. As Kierkegaard reminds us, “It is one thing to conquer in the hardship, to overcome the hardship as one overcomes an enemy, while continuing in the idea that the hardship is one’s enemy; but it is more than conquering to believe that the hardship is one’s friend, that it is not the opposition but the road, is not what obstructs but what develops, is not what disheartens but ennobles” (Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844).
Some of us want “mountain top” experiences of God, but more often than not we learn “down in the valley,” where the daily cares of life encroach upon our ideals and visions. Yet it is precisely there, in the “desert of the everyday,” in the “testing of the tedious,” in the “hazards of hopelessness,” that we are enabled to elevate our consciousness to realize that God is ezra ve’tzarot nimtza me’od (עֶזְרָה בְצָרוֹת נִמְצָא מְאד) – a “very present help in our troubles” (Psalm 46:1).
Amen, God is aware of our frustration, our lowliness, our fear, our suffering… When God delivered his people by the miracle of splitting the sea (קריעת ים סוף), he closed off any way of escape apart from his direct intervention. The Egyptian army was behind them, the mountains hemmed them in, and the vast horizon of the sea loomed before their way. The only way of deliverance was from above, in the midst of our struggle, by God’s own hand.
Trust in God’s healing and deliverance is the first step… The LORD is the Rock and all his ways are perfect (Deut. 32:4), and this must be affirmed especially if we cannot fathom the testing of our present circumstances…
