Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and welcome to "Joni and Friends.”
The other day I was talking to Emily who deals with manic depression. Bless her heart, my friend is doing the best she can to manage it with medication, but still, at times, the smallest of things; the smallest of disappointments or hurts really, really get her down. The other day we were talking after church (I always try to spend time with Emily because, well, I recognize that she has a disability; maybe it’s different than my physical one, but I know how much it means when people reach out with a word of empathy). Anyway! When I asked Emily how she was doing, she recounted a list of annoyances and irritations that, together, with her manic depression, added up to one big headache. She said to me, “Joni, I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand why God allows so much pain and suffering in the lives of Christians, His own children. I mean, the world is one thing; but we’re among the saved.” I knew what she was getting at. Why does God allow so much pain in the lives of His children?
And it made me wonder: Why did God allow so much pain in the life of His own Son? Every time I read that little section in Mark chapter 15, verses 16-17 where it says (now listen to this), “The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers” … I have to stop there because I want to know why God allowed those soldiers to call together another whole company of soldiers to drag Jesus into that back room of the Praetorium, shut the door, and then beat the pulp out of Him, and do in that back room who knows what else that Scripture is too polite to even mention. Why did God allow that? And Jesus wasn’t even an adopted child like we are, adopted into God's family. No, Jesus was God's only begotten Son, God's one and only Son! Oh my goodness, I can’t even begin to imagine the vile and abusive and torturous things those drunken soldiers must have done to Jesus. Not just a company of soldiers, but a whole other company of them. The thought is awful.
But the thought is comforting, because you and I have a Savior who ‘gets it,’ who understands, who’s been there. And I think the enormous suffering Jesus endured only goes to show how awful and offensive and tragic sin really is. The sufferings of Jesus show how heinous sin is and how it should motivate us that, no matter what we suffer, no matter what the inconveniences or irritations, none of us—not Emily and her manic depression or me and my quadriplegia – none of us has suffered to the point of shedding blood, like Jesus did.
As I told Emily that Sunday morning in church, our sufferings may well reveal in me and in her sour, complaining spirit that needs to be put behind us. Why does God allow so much suffering in the lives of Christians? Because suffering, more than anything, shows the stuff of which we are made—and often it’s not very pretty. Suffering reveals the anxieties and fears and worries and doubts and hidden resentments and bitterness. Because of all that, Jesus suffered? Oh, my goodness, may we never privately cling to the sins that made His agony so awful. And so today, I want you to join Emily and me in getting rid of any sin we’ve housebroken or tamed or domesticated to try and make it look respectable. Let’s not hold onto anything that would place us in the company of those soldiers in Mark chapter 15 (for that’s what our sins did to our Savior).It’s a lesson for Emily, for me, and for you.
© Joni and Friends, 2013
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