A neighborhood party on a summer night…
Friends moving from house to house…
Voices drifting across the lawns as the sun sets…
He doesn’t know he will remember this night for the rest of his life.
Walking toward his neighbor’s yard, he notices a weed in the flower bed at the edge of his own yard.
He stops
to pull it…
The neighbor’s dog sits on the other side of the flower bed…
growling….
As he bends down, the dog jumps at him; biting him in the face; ripping open his cheek; sinking its teeth into the bone just below his eye socket…
There would be months of surgeries, pain killers and suffering.
There would be scars that would never leave his face…
And even deeper scars on his spirit…
He vaguely remembered a bible verse learned in Sunday school…
…rejoice in our sufferings Romans 5:3
“Are you kidding me?” he thought.
“Rejoice in my sufferings?”
“Why would I do that?”
The verse he remembered goes on…
…suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Romans 5:3-5
Could trials be a way to show salvation in our daily lives?
Afflictions, as sent by God, are designed to draw out our graces, but not our corruptions. Mathew Henry
Could afflictions be designed to change us so that we can show the world what God’s gift of grace looks like?
Is that what Paul meant by working out our salvation?
–continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, Philippians 2:12
If so, how then do we endure in the midst of suffering?
Could it be By turning to God and asking for His strength?
Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always Psalm 105:4
Does that sound too simple??
Sometimes the best answer— the truest answer is the simplest…
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest Mathew 11:28
And then we can say…
I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. Philippians 4:13
