Look around you. There’s tragedy everywhere—young girls getting painful diseases, people are being murdered, people dying. Our world is fallen, there’s no question about it. People suffer, people are in pain, and in the midst of all of this our initial reaction is to cry out to God telling him to fix it.
We beg, we plead, and we make bargains with God. Deep down I think all of us know that he’s…well, he’s God. He’s omniscient (all-knowing), he’s omnipotent (all-powerful), he’s omnipresent (everywhere simultaneously). We demand for justice. We demanded that Casey Anthony get punished for killing her daughter. We demand to know why our loved one just died. We demand that the man who hurt us gets punished. We seek justice for ourselves, and often for other people.
But what is justice? In the great USA we certainly have our definitions. But is that the real meaning of justice?
I suppose to truly answer the question we’d have to look back in time…..
Once upon a time, on a land called Earth, there was this man and woman named Adam and Eve. They both screwed up. They did something that was wrong. They sinned. And that began the story our lives. We now are born into a sinful world. Our bodies fail. People we love get cancer, and we’re forced to watch them die before our very eyes. Marriages get screwed up. The husband starts drinking, and doing drugs, and beating on his wife. Dads make mistakes, and end up dying because of it. Because of those mistakes, they leave their children without a father.
Life isn’t fair. Everywhere we look things just flat-out aren’t fair.
And to top off the unfairness, God sent his son to die for us. Seriously? Think about it. Think about who we are, the world that we live in, and yet someone died for us? That’s not fair. Don’t get me wrong, that’s blooming AWESOME…but that’s not fair and in our own eyes, according to our own definitions that’s not justice being served.
If justice were actually served, we’d be rotting in hell for the rest of eternity. But you know what? There’s this cool theological word called “propitiation”. Basically, God can’t just simply pass over sin. In Romans 3:25 we see what’s called propitiation. It’s a sacrifice that satisfies justice.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since my diagnosis. Getting lupus definitely isn’t my ideal life. My ideal life involves trips overseas, it involves fun and exciting things. My ideal life would be me going sky diving, flying planes, and living a life on the edge. Lupus kind of gets in the way of that sometimes. And it’s not fair. But it’s my reality.
I’ve been angry. I’ve been asking those “Why me?!” questions. I’m sure many of us have thought similar thoughts. I know I sure have…especially in these past couple years. Mere words do not describe the depths of my anger since my diagnosis. There’s no need to go into details, let’s just leave it at I’ve been pretty pissed off for far too long.
But do you know what a gift it is to have a chronic illness? Because of my constant pain, I’m constantly reminded of how I don’t know the narrative of the end of my life. Lupus may very well kill me one day. One day I may die of failed kidneys, livers, etc. I can’t control what happens to me. Who knows? I may die on my way to work today. We don’t know what, or how, we’re going to die. The fact is—we are going to die.
I believe that I was purchased with a price. That Jesus died on the cross to pay for my sins so that I could have a relationship with God. I don’t know about you, but I try to take care of my purchases…especially the more expensive ones. So my question is why does God allow us to hurt and be damaged?
I won’t pretend to know the answers. And to do so would be the height of presumption. But I do know that I seem to learn the most when I suffer the most. Growing up my Dad would spank me when I did something wrong as my punishment. Of course, I was the perfect child so that hardly ever happened (….just kidding….I’m surprised I don’t have welts from my childhood…). But if we lived in a utopia, we would learn nothing. End of story.
We can’t control how we die, but we can control how we live. The “why me” questions are designed more to express your anguish than to actually find answers.
We desire lives of simplicity, with nice and paved walkways for as far as our eyes can see. But I’m quickly finding that God loves to throw you curve balls. He puts us in situations that we look around us and wonder exactly how strong God seems to think we are. We think we’re going to fall apart, and break, that we’re not strong enough to do this and to make it through this. But somehow, someway, with God’s love and grace, we persevere. The crappy situations we find ourselves in, the ones that make our stomachs churn and hearts race, are the ones that we seem to learn the most from. Those are the ones that strengthen our faith and grant us wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.
II Corinthians 4:16-18 says the following…and please read this. Don’t just skim over it like you usually do when you see passages of scripture pop up.
“16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal”
I’m not gonna lie. Living a life in constant pain is well, painful. It’s hard. It’s hard to keep a smile on sometimes, but I am a vapor of smoke. This pain I’m in isn’t forever. One day I’ll have a new body, without pain and without default. One day I’ll be in heaven with my Father. One day.
In our lives it’s so hard sometimes to keep our eyes on the goal, and to keep in mind that “our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Philippians 4:15). It’s so easy to focus on the negatives, or to get discouraged, or to get angry at God or at our circumstances.
We feel as if He’s in charge, that He should fix our problems, that He should provide us some miracle to save our son from dying, or to heal us, or to give us enough money to make our bills work. He IS in charge, but sometimes we forget.
We forget that this isn’t our movie. We aren’t the stars of planet Earth, we’re only the stand-ins. You know…the ones where you only see the back of our head for a split second. Planet Earth is about God. It’s not about me, it’s not about my problems. It’s about God. God made the movie, God’s the star of the movie. This is His movie, His world, and His gift. Sometimes when we face hard times, we just have to keep reminding ourselves that this crappy situation we’ve found ourselves in IS in God’s plan. He’s not forgotten about us, He didn’t decide to go take a nap. He’s still here with us. He’s still in control, and the beautiful thing is that He always will be.
***Note: I actually wrote this close to a month ago. This is a prime example of how "quickly" I get on to posting things. lol
