Today’s Scripture Reading (January 2,
2014): Romans 5
Over the
Christmas season, I read an article that highlighted some Facebook posts over
the past year. The one thing that all the posts had in common was that they
were written by teens complaining about their lot in life. And I have to admit
that there were some classics. One Facebook post read “Don’t you hate it when
your maids **** up everything in your room.” Yep, I agree that is tough to have
to put up with. Another post read “So my parents won’t buy me a MacBook Pro
until I clean up my room. Urg, what a horrible punishment.” I am a little
surprised that someone hasn’t already reported those parents to Social
Services. Actually, after this comment was a discussion on whether or not the
author was spoiled. But the person who wrote the post was deeply offended that
anyone would think that they were spoiled. I guess some people just jump to
conclusions. But maybe one of my favorite posts was in regard to the Christmas
gifts that they had received. “Merry Christmas! I got a MacBook Pro, skis and
an iPad mini. No iPhone though. L My parents suck.”
Secretly, I
hope someone with a warped imagination just wrote the posts (although each post
was accompanied by screen shots of the post.) But if they were real, I feel
sorry for the kids. Part of parenting is getting our kids ready to live life,
and based on the evidence of these Facebook posts, these kids are a long way
from being ready for life. But … even though I think this is the common
reaction, I also think that secretly maybe we all wish that we were the writers
of the posts. I mean, how many of us would clean up our rooms immediately if we
knew that there was a MacBook at the end of the task. (Even adults would jump
at the task. Hmmm, I wonder if I had my maid clean up the room if I could still
get the MacBook.)
This kind of
life might be what we want, but it isn’t what we need. The problem is that
while we want an easy life, there is no strength that will result in that kind
of life. Paul looks at the Roman Church, and sees a church that was had
suffered persecution. In fact, at one point the Roman Church had been severely
threatened because all of the Jews had been kicked out of the city. The problem
was that the Jewish Christians had occupied all of the core leadership
positions in the church. And when they were ejected from the city, the Roman
Church, the ones who were left, the ones who had never had to lead the Church
before, were given the task. If the Roman Church was to survive, it was going
to rest on the shoulders of some people who never expected to ever have to lead
the Christian Church. And not only that, even after the Jews were evicted, the
powers in Rome were not happy with the Church – and they actively persecuted
the Church. And there is no reason to believe that the reaction of the Romans
was any different from ours. And too often when we don’t get what we want we
think that God is mad at us – our response is often “God what I have done wrong
that you would treat me this way.”
So Paul
instructs the Romans to glory in our sufferings – to be happy when they suffer,
because Paul knew that suffering produces perseverance. Suffering is not
something that we glide through. If we are going to get to the other side of
suffering without letting it define us, we are going to have to persevere. And
if we persevere, we develop character. No longer will the winds of life define
where it is that we will go. A lack of an iPhone does not change who we are,
because there is a strength that has been developed inside of us that wells up
out of us when things get hard. And because we have character, we have hope.
And if I am
really honest, when I read the Facebook posts, my sense is that there is no
suffering, which meant that there could be no perseverance, which had resulted
in a definite lack of character, and a lack of hope. There is no hope that for future
of the person who wrote the post, they were maxing out in their lives right now
– this was as good as life was likely to get for these authors - and there was no
hope that these authors would ever do something that would change the world in
which they live.
If there is
one thing that I know, it is that this year will hold some bad moments. Every
year seems to bring its own share of hurt. It is not what we hope for in the
opening days of a year, but we know that they are coming. And when they come
this year, I hope you can remember that your suffering is ultimately the reason
why you – and we – can have hope. There is a strength and a hope that is
developed inside of us when we suffer that can be developed no other way. And
for that we can be glad even in our suffering.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Romans
6
No comments:
Post a Comment