Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. – 2 Corinthians 1:9

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 9, 2018): 2 Corinthians 1

Shaun Hick writes that “You need to spend time crawling alone through shadows to truly appreciate what it is to stand in the sun.” We never understand the gift of health unless we have been really sick. We can’t be expected to make the most out of our good moments unless we remember how we felt during the bad. I know that sometimes the bad in life threatens to take over, but then, in those moments when the sun finally breaks through, we remember why it is good to be alive.

There is a lot of discussion about what Paul meant here, and the two options are that there was some kind of outside persecution that was being brought down on Paul and his friends, or that they were suffering from some kind of sickness. It would have been common in Paul’s day to refer to sickness as “death,” and to say that being restored to health was being “raised to life” or “raised from the dead.” The translators would seem to have been arguing for the latter interpretation; that Paul, and maybe some of his associates, were sick. And the illness had limited their activity, and maybe even forced a pause in Paul’s intended trip to Jerusalem. One of the subtle cues is that Paul says that “we felt we had received the sentence of death.” If it was persecution, the statement might be more objective, but here Paul talks about a feeling. It is possible that the persecution could have been so severe that Paul would have felt as if he was suffering under the penalty of death when no death sentence had been issued by the authorities. But in the context of this letter, it seems that sickness might have plagued the delegation as they made their way to Jerusalem.

Paul knew what it meant to be sick. Later in this letter to the Corinthians, Paul would relate that he suffered from a “thorn in the flesh,” and that God’s response to the Apostle’s request for its removal was that “My [God’s] grace is sufficient for you [Paul], for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Yet, even though the thorn was apparently never removed, and we have no idea what the thorn might have been, Paul never wavered in his belief that there was nothing that he needed to fear, whether persecution or sickness because his God was the one “who raises the dead.” No matter how bad it got, nothing was finished until God said that it was. And that hope gave Paul the strength to simply push on toward the finish line.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 2 & 3