Rules of Engagement – It Ain’t Easy

Greetings Dear Reader,

The problem of suffering is not one that is easily approached.  I hear often a question that begins with “How can a loving God allow...”   You may fill in the rest with anything that to the asker would make God allowing it seem unloving.  Even as I write this I am trying to explain it to someone who is asking this very question.

God never promised the journey would be easy.  War is not easy and we are truly at war.  The rules of engagement are not that God does not love when he allows suffering.  It is rather in spite of our poor exercise of our free will he loves us.  If we are going to fault God for suffering in the world then we must fault him for giving us free will.  It is not God that is responsible for my suffering or pain.  Suffering and pain are the natural results of a fallen world.

I need to realize that I am supposed to be totally dependent upon God for everything.  It is not up to me what comes into my life.  It is up to me how I interact with God when those things arrive.  I have control over nothing but my response to God in the midst of my journey.  God never promised anything would be easy.  He did promise that he would be with me through everything.

Christ did promise that if we are joined with him the burden of the actual joining would be light and easy.  It is in the guiding that ease is found.  I do not need to carry the pain and suffering because Christ will carry those things for me.  All that I need do is to follow him. 

It is wrong to demand that God make life easy for us when he carried the burden of our failures.  It is selfish to demand that life be as I wish it to be when God knows what is best and sees to it that it is sent my way.  I can only follow in faith.  It does not mean that I will not wonder why there is suffering and pain.  It does mean that as I wonder I must not blame God or forget to keep following.  The answers are further down the path. 

There is pain I feel that I do not comprehend.  Things linger at the bottom of my heart and in the back of my mind that try to hinder my faith and following.  I cannot allow the hindrance and it is the faith and following that will get me to the answers.  The knowledge does not lessen the pain but it does propel me onward.  My Grandfather used to tell me when I thought things were hard that the only way out was through.

The rule of engagement is that “it ain’t easy.”  Faith and following, however, can move me forward if I let them.  Christ is there to get me through the next valley, or the next few steps, or even the next inch if necessary. 

Lord I have a question that I haven’t found an answer for

Noting seems to make it go away

Your Book was strangely silent when I turned the pages in it

Though I thought you’d surely have a word to say

I have had this question for some time without an answer

There’s a different view in everything I’ve read

At times I thought I knew it but when it got down to it

It was just some words that someone else had said

If only I were with you when you walked down here among us

We could have talked it over face to face

Though I know you never left me all alone know I long to hear your voice

Hear your words, touch your face.

Oh one day you will come for me

I’ll kneel before you humbly

We’ll talk about the things I never knew

And all the things I couldn’t see

Will simply be explained to me

In words that could only come from you

Until that day I’m waiting here with upturned face and open ear

And if my questions never bring me truth

I’ll be satisfied to know

That when my time on earth’s no more 

I’ll have eternity to talk with you. – Pat Terry

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a home owner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store."