It has been a week of bad news, coming in waves from far and from near. Bad news is wearisome, isn't it? Doesn't your soul just get tired? Doesn't bad news make you want to throw up the white flag? Hebrews 12 says to "run with endurance..." But sometimes it is hard to crawl out of bed much less run.
How then are we to endure? By focusing on the good news, by "fixing our eyes on Jesus..." Hebrews12:2
"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us." Rom. 8:18
Jesus endured and Jesus was raised. Jesus intercedes and Jesus will make ALL things right again.
"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us." Rom. 8:18
Jesus endured and Jesus was raised. Jesus intercedes and Jesus will make ALL things right again.
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Hebrews 4, Rest, God's Rest. It doesn't mean inactivity...it means deep soul rest. IT means peace in spite of circumstances, it means an end of attempting to make sense of what doesn't and make right what we cannot. It means trust in God's character and in His work.
v.2 "For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard."
v.6 "Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it (rest) and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience..."
God's rest is offered but not received. Why? Distrust and disobedience. What often leads men to distrust and disobedience? Suffering.
v.2 "For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard."
v.6 "Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it (rest) and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience..."
God's rest is offered but not received. Why? Distrust and disobedience. What often leads men to distrust and disobedience? Suffering.
Men suffer...men reason,
men "store the sand and let the gold go free."
"The sages have a hundred maps to give
men "store the sand and let the gold go free."
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live."
The Convert-G.K. Chesterton (I've quoted this before and will again!)
Here's the hard truth: though we may reason and reason away ...we will never be able to make sense of suffering. We will never make sense of God through suffering if we do not trust in His healing and restoration of all things.
And if we never trust
we will never obey
and if we never trust and obey
we will NEVER rest.
we will never obey
and if we never trust and obey
we will NEVER rest.
“Today, if you hear His voice,
do not harden your hearts.”
Heb. 3: 15, 4:7b
do not harden your hearts.”
Heb. 3: 15, 4:7b
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