The older I get, the more real grief becomes to me. When you are a child and the worst you have experienced is a friend moving away, it's hard to truly understand the nature of how real sorrow and pain are here on earth. I still haven't experienced many trials. But as I watch others walk through the valleys where the Lord has them, I hurt for them in a way that I never have before. It forces me back to the truths that I know to consider whether they withstand griefs like these. As I've been reading through C.S. Lewis' book
A Grief Observed, I have been struck with how honestly he writes about his wife's death. He writes,
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”
The beauty of deep pain and sorrow is that it forces us to come to Scripture and the Lord to see if we truly believe the gospel. Are we willing to count everything, even the best things, as a loss for the sake of Christ? He will not be found wanting. And that was it what Peter talks about at the beginning of his first letter.
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6-9 ESV)
May sorrows truly be something that reveals the genuineness of our faith, resulting in the glory of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment