Conclusion
For no-one is cast off by the Lord for ever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.
Lamentations 3:31-33 NIVUK
When I first arrived in Ormoc City, Philippines, I came across something that made me smile. It wasn't just the traders at the gate of the port who were yelling "Moron! Moron!" and were actually selling a rice-based delicacy, not insulting me. No, it was the destination board on the side of jeepneys that plied their trade in the transportation hub which used to be close to the port. You see, there are two small villages near to Ormoc that have fantastic names. They are Bliss and Bagong Buhay (which means 'New Life' in the local dialect). Could you imagine clambering into a vehicle and asking the driver to take you to Bliss? Amazing, right?
But the story of how these villages came to be might not put a smile on your face.
On November 5, 1991, Ormoc was hit with a flash flood. Waters rose by seven feet in just fifteen minutes, costing the lives of at least four thousand people, two and a half thousand people were missing and thousands of people lost their homes. Bliss and Bagong Buhay were new villages built to house the homeless and destitute.
In fact, the last time we were there, we drove past another new village of smart little concrete homes, all for people made homeless by another two super-typhoons. These people had previously lived in homes made from light materials such as cheap timber and tin or tarpaulin. Now they were getting proper homes in a safer place that were more resistant to disaster. They had 'traded up'.
But to get 'Bliss' or 'New Life', they had to pass through powerful storms. They had to be exposed to severe risk or danger. They had to suffer.
This, I believe, is a picture for us too. As Jesus Himself said:
Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.
Matthew 16:24-27 NIVUK
To get to our new life in Heaven, to reach our eternal bliss, we must be willing to suffer for a relatively short time. But our suffering will be worth it in the end because of the eternal reward it will achieve for us:
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIVUK
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.
1 Peter 1:3-7 NIVUK
The symbol of Christianity is not a sports car or a big house or a highly inflated bank balance or even fashionable clothes. No, it is a cross. A cross where our Lord suffered to bring us the eternity we do not deserve. If He suffered, why should we expect anything else?
Those who preach otherwise and try to tell us that we should expect our lives to be a bed of roses and luxury on earth are nothing but scoundrels. They have perverted the Gospel, misunderstood the whole Counsel of Scripture and are peddling empty lies to the gullible for their own material gain. The apostle Paul had no time for them (1 Timothy 6:3-10). Neither should we.
So, you see, suffering for a Christian is not a curse. No, it is an inevitability of life on a fallen planet where our Lord Himself suffered to save us.
And here, in these verses, right in the middle of the saddest book in the Bible, crammed with five chapters of abject, fully warranted, misery, we see the prophet Jeremiah's framework for dealing with suffering. It is firstly to recognise that the Lord is our provider, but not of untold riches if we'd only touch the screen or send in a small gift. No, He is the provider of every new day and of the resources - sometimes scarce - to get through it. So we wait for Him at all times and never take matters into our own hands. He is our hope. This is because He is good, and therefore when we wait it is still good, and even if we suffer it can be good. And because He is good, we seek Him. We want to know and experience more of His goodness. Lastly, we see that the Lord is our reason. He is ultimately in control and has not abdicated His sovereignty when we suffer. This makes us able to accept our lowly position, to feel the pain from it and face it with courage. Why? Because we trust Him.
This teaching is hard. Not as hard as suffering itself. However, it rubs against our normal human instincts and makes us think hard about how we react to situations. The stark truth is that the pain we endure from our suffering is sometimes almost too much to bear. However, we can actually make it worse. We can push ourselves over the limit. We can actually break ourselves. When life seems to be against us, sometimes the only thing we can control is our reactions, but they can change our perspective on everything.
I will never forget boarding those Filipino bangka boats and trusting the boatmen to manipulate a tiny rudder at the back that directed the power of the engine and drove us upstream against the tide, through incredibly scenic jungle banks and towards the outstanding beauty of the cliffs, cave and natural bridge. The rudder was so small, yet it could change the direction of the boat.
We too can change the direction of our suffering, even if it seems the whole world is against us. Jeremiah has told us how. All we need to do is decide not to be a victim anymore and trust in God as our provider, hope and reason. We might never be able to fully escape our suffering on earth, but if we follow Jeremiah's advice, we will one day find ourselves in a far better place, where all our suffering will be less than a distant memory. I pray we'll all be there. Because then we'll realise once and for all that not a single tear we've shed has been wasted and that all our sufferings are always worth it in the end.
In the West we may well see the protection of God on and in our lives. But what of those in places like Afghanistan. It must be so hard for believers there to continue trusting God.