Where is God when it hurts? : a comforting, healing guide for coping with hard times by Yancey Philip

Author:Yancey, Philip
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suffering, Pain, Pain, Suffering
Publisher: Grand Rapids, Mich. : Zondervan Pub. House
Published: 1997-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

The Great Reversal

"What doesn't destroy me makes me stronger," Martin Luther King, Jr., had said. Mr. Buckley's peaceful, wrinkled face seemed to prove it. Like a tough old oak that had weathered thunderstorms, blizzards, and forest fires, Mr. Buckley exuded a quality of strength such as most of us sheltered Americans will never experience. There's something unique about having only God to lean on in times of trial.

After the hours I spent with Mr. Buckley, I finally understood Jesus' strange, paradoxical words in the Beatitudes. I realized that I had always viewed the words "Blessed are the poor . . . those who mourn . . . the meek . . . the persecuted" as a kind of sop Jesus threw to the unfortunates. Well, since you aren't rich, and your health is bad, and your face is wet with tears, I'll toss out a few nice phrases and a promise of future rewards. Maybe you'll feel better. But some of the promises are expressed in present tense—"theirs is the kingdom"—and my meetings with poor blacks in Mississippi showed me how the poor and the oppressed can indeed be blessed. Mr. Buckley demonstrated a quality of life I had encountered in few other people. His faith was solid, aged, and worn.

The apostle Paul uses a strange phrase, "His [God's] strength is made perfect in weakness." It is a phrase misunderstood and sometimes ridiculed by those who denounce God for allowing pain and suffering in this world. But in representatives like Paul and like Mr. Buckley, the phrase has the ring of truth. Even of Jesus it was said, "He learned obedience from what he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8).

We who stand alongside, observing suffering people, expect to find anger and bitterness. We wait for them to turn on God and lash out against him for the inequities of life. Remarkably, they often find instead a solace in him that puts us to shame. It is no accident that some of the most inspiring stories of faith come from those often considered "losers" by the rest of the world.

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