I went to a Christian Women's retreat awhile back. It was pretty awesome. I'd been to a few teen retreats and the national Youth Rally, but I'd always found them boring and dumb. Love Jesus, hate the machine, amiright, man? Society doesn't control me!
Um...anyway...
This one wasn't like that (possibly because my views on "society, man" have matured, but more likely because this thing was far less structured). It was, in fact, pretty awesome, as previously stated. We showed up on Friday night, had a little opening service, then had dinner and played games (me, Mom, Aunty, and a friend from church played Taboo [which is the best game, if you're not playing with my fiancee, who always wins, no matter who he's paired with - we once rotated him all night so that he was partnered with each person, and whichever team he was on always won, even when he was paired with the girl who said Harry Potter was a bad series of books, but Twilight was good and so was clearly stupid (yay parenthesis)]). On Saturday, we had a whole day of Bible studies. Sunday, there was a closing service and we all went home. It was kind of whirl-wind, with only about an hour on Saturday set aside for "quiet time."
What was really cool was that it was all put on by my mom's church, so most of the ladies there were from the same place, the group was pretty small, and each study was led by one of the ladies. Each one picked a different topic to cover and covered it in their own way. It wasn't too structured then, we were all sort of feeling our way through it, and I feel like I learned a ton. It was very enriching (and I now feel like I know what that word even means).
The theme was blessings, and more specifically, blessings in suffering. The question came up again and again - do you want happiness or joy? What's the difference?
The large-group Bible study centered around this video (which isn't on youtube, so I can't embed it, sorry - but if you like it, you now know where it comes from and can check out the rest of the series). If you haven't got time to watch it, his main points are:
1) We're asking the wrong question: "Will I suffer?" Duh. Yes. You will.
2) What we really want to know is: "When, how, and how much will I suffer?" This is still a bad question, though because:
3) The best question is: "Will it be useful, meaningful, or lead to good if I suffer?"
He centers his sermon around Philippians 1, where the imprisoned Paul praises God for his imprisonment, because now the guards know about Jesus, and some are converting. He's not happy, but because of God, he has Joy - he knows that even in suffering, God is there, and he has a plan. We aren't always going to be happy, but we can always have joy.
Sometimes, God takes us in different directions than we think we should be going. Footprints in the sand? Please. Sometimes, they're drag marks. (PS, please click on that link. It's...mesmerizing.) I end up at a place in my life, and I just don't know what to do. I see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I know I'll never be able to reach it. I'm pretty sure it's a train anyway. Even God seems far away, and I'm standing there thinking, "What the heck? How did I get here? I can't get out. I can't go on." Trust me, everyone does this, whether we know about it or not.
Check out Psalm 13 for a good example. In this one, David calls out to God from great suffering. He feels that God has forgotten him. Still, even in the midst of that, he trusts that God has a plan, and will come to his aid.
It doesn't even have to be a big crisis. As Anton Chekov said, "Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that wears you out." Amen to that. Sometimes, we just get tired. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."
When we hit that point, we need to be asking God what he's up to, thinking about where he's leading us.
Now I'm going to take this someplace a little dark, because that's how I roll.
Back in the ancient days, Neil Curry visited our college, and he came to most of the English classes to do a guest lecture sort of thing. He brought with him a Plath poem called, "The Arrival of the Bee Box." He had us break it down, and I think he was surprised how many of us (at our little conservative Christian college) thought immediately of Noah's Ark. Of course, this isn't at all what Plath was getting at, and it's not terribly accurate to imagine God creating a world and then being baffled and slightly panicked by it ("My Goodness, what have I done!?") But the comparison isn't so terrible. The voice of the poem decides, first, to kill all the bees, as God did with his flood. Then she relents and decides to set them free, as God did with that whole Jesus shakedown. The box, this world, is only temporary.
Then, again,
I read a book called Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee. It's not a remotely Christian book. At some point, the main character ponders the idea that we are all here to serve God's purpose, but that we can never know what God's purpose is. If God's purpose for us was to move certain pot from one table to another, then we have fulfilled our life's purpose. So one can't go around worrying about one's life purpose, one can only do the best one can with a given situation.
When bad things happen, we say that maybe God is testing us, or maybe
God is trying to make us grow, etc. But maybe the suffering we
experience isn't for us. Maybe it is. Or maybe by moving that pot from one table to another, we set off a chain of events that brings one person to faith. We may never know it, but that doesn't make it less important.
The point I'm coming to is that as Christians, we have different motivations and a different end game.
Our motivation is not to get ahead, to avoid suffering, or to improve ourselves. Our motivation is to praise God, to serve him, and to further his kingdom. We don't have to worry about our job, because our lives are so much more than that. We don't have to worry about the future, because it's in God's hands. All we have to do is listen for his guidance and do our best.
As for end game, well, our end game is not a comfortable retirement or a lasting legacy of rock. Our end game is heaven. The box is only temporary.
As Christians, we can have joy even in suffering because we know that our suffering serves a purpose, even if it's not one that we will ever know, or maybe couldn't even understand.
We can have joy in suffering because we know that all suffering ends, and we will be in heaven one day.
Faith isn't something we feel, it's something we know. Even if God feels far away, we know he isn't. Happiness is a feeling. But Joy is the Knowledge that God is there, and he has your back.
Lamentations 3:
19 I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
20 I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
21 Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
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