  photo credit: balleyne |
I’ve been considering a poem by Karsten Piper over at Desiring God – Sometimes He Kills Us to Save Us.
I’ve had “the worst” – as far as what people often think of the worst, and what I think of as Really Bad Things – happen several times already and I’m not even forty yet. Including the death of my first husband, and some genuinely terrible events during that time in my life. Stuff you see on Jerry Springer or the Lifetime movie of the week. Now we have long periods of time where we think things are going well – we’re over the hump, we’re walking with God, we go to church every week, we give sacrificially… and we start getting the idea that we’re immune from any more serious problems. It’s kind of a prosperity-theology-lite. That sacrificial giving in particular can take on the flavor of the Danegeld, if we’re not careful.
We’ll be skipping along without a care in the world when something happens and we’re reeling, wondering how this event is compatible with God’s love, and too stunned even to wonder what our next move should be. There are things that happened twenty and thirty years ago that I’m just now understanding the benefit of – things that broke my heart, devastated me in every possible way – and looking back now I find huge, unexpected gains associated with that pain. So it’s with that in mind that I read the poem and reluctantly nod in agreement. I don’t know why there isn’t an easier way. I desperately want there to be an easier way. At the same time I’m trusting God to provide the best way, and not necessarily the easiest, I’m crying out, “I believe! Help my unbelief!”
And He does, in time.
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