TORN IN THE FLESH: Part XII of Why Not? - a Perspective on Suffering

We wrote in our previous  chapter about King Saul and how his pride brought him down; he needed to be humbled.

Pride goes before destruction,
a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18

But what about David? Did David also get a bit full of himself, too? Remember in an early part we looked at David and how he seduced Bathsheba and murdered Uriah the Hittite. David was severely punished for what he did as well, but God did not reject David from being King of Israel as He did Saul. What was the difference?

When we become full of our selves, we lead our selves into trouble and we may also decide we are better than others. We may even begin to abuse others. God may allow some suffering to remind us we are but humans and to keep us humble. We may suffer even greater outcomes if we refuse to be humbled.

The people we looked at so far were humbled because of some sin on their part or because they turned away from God and put themselves up on a pedicel. But what if someone has been forgiven by God, been saved, is putting God first and serving Him faithfully? We have said we all suffer in this world, God pours rain on all and the sun shines on all, the good and the bad. But can even the faithful Christian suffer for the reason of humbling?

Is there Scripture to support this? Did you ever consider the Apostle Paul? Look at Second Corinthians 12:7-10.

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Who is saying this?

Paul, who had many reasons to brag. If Paul had to be given a thorn of suffering to keep him humble and focused, then how much more someone like me. I am far weaker than Paul. I dread to think of the monster I would have been if not for certain afflictions I have, weak eyes, psoriasis that mars my skin and many other failings of mind and body.

Sometimes asking the question, "Why me?" is something we should attempt seriously to answer. We may not have done anything to deserve it. It may be what we would do if it didn't happen. Like pain may be a warning to examine the body, suffering may be a warning to examine our faithfulness to God and not to our selves.

In 2012, I became caretaker to both my mom and dad over the last six months of their lives and there was a lot of suffering involved by a number of people, my parents, of course, and me and my wife, and a number of others. It was the Grace of God how things worked out through that ordeal that often seemed hopeless and impossible. It was also a very humbling experience for me and it brought home the passage about the farmer who stocked his barns to overflowing. It also directs us back to that Rich Young Ruler who couldn’t pass up his riches to follow Jesus and what his future really held, plus it made another bit of scripture very clear, real and meaningful to me. It is from the Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 6:19-21.

 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

My mother was 92 and my father 94 when they died. Their house was full of all they had accumulated over the 72 years they had been married and individually over more than 90 years; I mean the rooms were full, the attic and the basement. But in the last days of their lives, as my mother died and then less than three weeks later, my dad, all of it was gone. Their car sold, their house sold, all the furnishing, knick knacks, pots and pans, old paint, tools, stored away mementos, everything hauled away. Only the clothes taken to the nursing home remained and after they died even these were gone, given to charity.

I saved only all the photographs and some important papers, and two of my father’s hat, one he wore often in age and his Sailor hat from World War II. Those things were of little value in the end, but what was of value is knowing they both knew the Lord and they were not gone like their possessions, but lived on in Heaven, where their real treasure is.

We begin this journey of life
Down a road we do not yet know.
We see the blossoms of the moment,
Costumed in dancing colors
That entices us like the bees,
To their perfumed petal traps
And we lust to gain their beauty,
 To glisten like the rose after a rain.

We watch the sun rise upon the distance city,
Turning the towers of glass to gold,
Shimmering like a river of riches
And our eyes serve us our breakfast of wants
Sprinkled with the sweet sugar of excess.
We glutton for the fat of the land.
Our stressed hearts beat faster
As the grasp of our hands
Fills our veins with the empty
Calories of success.

We ignore the storms of warning
That dare darken our skies and the path
To our ever bigger car and grander house.
We fill our rooms with non-necessities
To gorge our obese egos
And we ignore the dust specks of reality
That swirl about the air to settle
Lightly upon our treasures
As if in echo of some ancient tome.
Not Home Sweet Home,
But ashes to ashes and
Dust to dust.

We do not see the light for the shimmer.
Our eyes are always to the rainbow,
An illusion of sun and water,
A trick of diffusion
And a lure to delusion.
We cannot own the colors,
But can we the Pot of Gold at its end?
But where the rainbow ends
Lies the mire of despair and truth.
When we reach the distance touchdown point
The rainbow fades away
With all we ever gathered
And we are left naked before the eyes of God.

"At the Rainbow's End", Written June 2012


We have looked at suffering for various reasons, because of sin and thus punishment, sometimes as a means of discipline and now to keep us humble. But can we suffer for other reasons? Can we suffer when we haven’t committed a sin, are not really in need of punishment, have been well disciplined and are humbly serving God? And if so, can such suffering serve a purpose or be fair? Or is such suffering a reason to disbelieve in God?

There was something else noted here that is a clue for the next post , but for homework discipline, read Psalm 19, Luke 13 and also find out what happened at Dunkirk and what Churchill said about it as more clues to another reason we suffer, which will be the next posts' lesson.

References: Proverbs 16:18, 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Matthew 6:19-21

Illustration:

The photo at the top of this post is of my ankles taken by me in

August of 2013. During my daily morning as I circled the Kitchen Garden at Rockwood Museum Park a rose bush branch snagged my bare legs. I could not shake the branch. It dug in and slice up doth my lower extremities.  It really hurt, too. 

Even More what Scripture says about our suffering:
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:6-7

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me. “Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.” Hosea 5:15-6:3

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end. Lamentations 3:22

Oasis in the Valley of Death

Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.  James 5:13-20

There are people who believe they are alone, helpless and hopeless because they don't know they don't have to be. That is where I was in the summer of 1975. My wife and I had been through troubles and hard times in the past, but I always got up and dusted myself off and we climbed another hill. Now I couldn't see any hilltops.

I was like a man who thought the 23rd Psalm said, Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Death, instead of through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I didn't realize that moments like this were a shadow, often a very dark shadow, cast over one's life and in order to be a shadow there must be a light. The shadow is cast because something is blocking that light. My pride, my lusts and my sins had build steep canyon walls around me and blocked all rays from getting through, except a strange cross that had appeared on a wall a decade earlier that I had forgotten and dismissed.

Every possible child who had died in our life hurt, but the others had been distant in a way. When they were lost it was in a room where my wife was attended by doctors and nurses, except for the first baby, which died at home when she was completely alone and a doctor refused to come. When my wife called him, he told her she was imagining it, she couldn't possibly be going into labor.

The first child, a son, was the only one lost I actually saw and when I saw him, he was a corpse curled up in a basin in the bathroom. When the doctor finally came to our house, after he examined my wife, I asked him what we should do about the baby and he said, "you can throw it in the garbage for all I care," and he left. I was too angry to grieve.  I wanted to grab that doctor and beat him. 

But this seventh child I felt I knew. I sat near her for a week, not seeing her, but hearing that heartbeat. I was allowed some time off from my job, but would have perhaps been better served by working. My only inclination was to cry, but I couldn't do that because of the state of my wife. As much as I wanted to crawl in a hole, she was already in one. Although my wife had been in depressions before none had reached the depth of this. She wouldn't get out of bed. She talked only of being worthless and dying, of never being able to have a child. She told me she had her tubes tied after Amy died because the doctors insisted her carrying a baby to term was impossible. To get pregnant again was foolish and dangerous. No baby would survive and she could risk her own health. She said she didn't feel she was a woman and she kept apologizing for letting me down. I did not feel she had let me down at all. I had already accepted we wouldn't have children and had tried many times to convince her that was all right.

My wife had physical problems in that area. We didn't know until after we lost the second child, but she had an incompetent cervix and her womb was in the wrong way. Later, when she had her gull bladder removed in her late twenties, the surgeon also removed her appendix and he turned her womb around to the proper position. The large scar which ran down the center of her chest to her lower abdomen was bisected by a horizontal scar forming an inverted cross. We kidded she had had an autopsy.

The correction of the womb orientation did nothing to stem the problem and each subsequent loss only weakened the cervix further. One time they performed a procedure when she became pregnant called cerclage. The doctor described it as placing a drawstring at the cervix and pulling to closed. When the baby reached the point of labor, this drawstring would be loosened and the baby born. He was certain this would prevent any further loss.

He was wrong and in the fifth month we lost Michael. It was then I told her we should give up, adopt if it was so important, but she wanted "our" baby.   She said there were only three things she wanted in life. Me to be happy in my job, her own house and our own baby.

Now we came to summer 1975 and I could say I was happy in my job, nothing else. We were living in an apartment, a very nice apartment indeed, but we didn't have any real savings sufficient to buy another house. And it certainly seemed our own baby was out of the picture, especially if she had her tubes tied.

But listening to that heartbeat, I had come to believe in God. I didn't know what to do with that, but it was at least a twig to grasp when you're trying to scale a steep canyon wall.  

Down our road and just up the main highway was a new church just build. I passed it everyday going back and forth to work. Maybe if you are trying to climb toward God, a church could provide a good toehold to start. Of course, I knew nothing about the church except it was new and clean-looking and convenient. I suggested to my wife we give it a try.

I can't say she was enthusiastic about the idea. How many times had we failed in the church-going thing? Yet even going to church might be better than slashing your wrists, so on Sunday we went.

People from the door to the pew greeted us with smiles and welcomes. That was a nice change from our past experiences, if not a little unnerving. I was handed a bulletin and when I glanced down the first thing I saw were the words, "Laurel Hill Bible Church: An Independent FUNDAMENTALIST Church". No, "Fundamentalist" wasn't capitalized and emboldened on the bulletin, but that was the way I saw that word.

I'd never been in a fundamentalist church in my life. I'd been taught as a child to stay away from those nuts. I knew what fundamentalists were: Holy-Rolling, Bible-Thumping, Snake-Kissing, Body-Shaking, Faith-Healing, Book-Burning, Intolerant fruitcakes.  My desire was to get up and get out, but the service had started and my wife looked a little uplifted by the music and the smiles we had received. I would endure. I didn't want to walk up the aisle with everyone staring at me anyway. But you can make book, we wouldn't be back next week.

When the Pastor came out in an ill-fitting toupee and dark green leisure suit, it didn't raise my comfort any. Then he did his sermon. It was on suffering and his text came from James, the passage at the top of this post. I was suddenly alone in that sanctuary. No one else existed. Every word he said was directed at me. He was preaching my life and preaching my state-of-mind. And when he talked about Elijah being a man just like me I felt like a sword had sliced through me and cut out despair.  

At the end of the service, when he asked if anyone wanted prayer, I raised my hand.

On the Tuesday following, I knelt down by my desk and I prayed for forgiveness and I prayed for Jesus as best I could. When I stood up, everything was different.

To be continued: What's in a Name: Service and Miracles.