Today’s Scripture Reading (December
16, 2014): 2 Corinthians 1
A.W. Tozer,
in his book “The Root of Righteousness,” wrote something that we have ever
since that time really wish he had left unsaid. In Tozer’s words “It is
doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.” It
is not something that we want to know. Often, in spite of our objections on the
issue, we want God to be an escape from the bad, not the perpetrator of the
hurt in our lives. And yet, I have to admit that even I know the reality of
Tozer’s comment.
One of the
hardest stories in the Bible to understand is the “Sacrifice or the Binding of
Isaac” – an event that happened at the hands of his father, Abraham, and at the
direction of God. We go to great lengths to explain the story away; we argue
that it is misunderstood. But what if it wasn’t. There is absolutely no argument
that this day had to be the most painful day of Abraham’s life. Tradition holds
that Abraham and Isaac never spoke again after this day. We know that Isaac
seemed to be a mere stopping place between the exploits of Abraham and the
adventures of his grandson Jacob. Maybe that is just the way the story is told,
or maybe there is a deeper reason, one born out of the pain of Isaac’s
childhood – a pain that he was never able to leave behind.
Paul says
that he has a firm hope in the Corinthians because he knows that they have
shared in the sufferings of the greater Christian community – and because of
that pain, he knows that they share also in the comfort of God. It seems to be
the very thing that Tozer was trying to point out. God was able to use the
Corinthian Church in a great way simply because they had been hurt deeply. The
pain had proceeded the blessing – just as it had with Abraham and Isaac (the
blessing in the story of the “Binding of Isaac” begins with the release of
Isaac and the provision of a ram for sacrifice – but we shouldn’t kid ourselves
that the blessing in any way erased the pain.) Yet, as Christians we often want
to run from the pain, escape the pain, rather than allow God to work through it
– allowing the pain to lead us to the blessing of God and God’s using us to
change this world in ways that we would never have imagined.
Tozer goes
on with this description.
The flaming desire to be rid of every
unholy thing and to put on the likeness of Christ at any cost is not often
found among us. We expect to enter the everlasting kingdom of our Father and to
sit down around the table with sages, saints and martyrs; and through the grace
of God, maybe we shall; yes maybe we shall. But for the most of us it could
prove at first an embarrassing experience. Ours might be the silence of the untried
soldier in the presence of the battle-hardened heroes who have fought the fight
and won the victory and who have scars to prove that they were present when the
battle was joined.
Tozer understood, maybe better than most, that the pain and
the hurt in our lives were merely the signs that we have been in the battle.
And as deep as the pain may have been, the comfort is even deeper. It might be
a comfort that we only get glimpses of today, but we know that one day we will
emerge from the battle wearing he scars of the battle and the comfort of God
will be made complete.
But for today, we need to understand that we are still in the
battle. The pain of today is just the evidence that God is using us – preparing
to make this world a better place.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2
Corinthians 2 & 3
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