Lows in Christian life, really?

You have noticed this. Well-managed retail stores focus on the number of people in the checkout line. If one line gets too long, a sales associate is sent over from a different section in the store and for time-crunched people like me these heavenly words are heard: “I can help whoever is next in line.”

As a culture, we are being pampered. Convenience is now the norm, not the exception.

Suffering? Huh. Check out the row of painkillers we have available not just in the drug store but the grocery store. There’s a milligram dosage for every pain and pang, from sleeplessness to sleep enhancers.

We don’t do the “woe is me” thing as a nation, so Christianity is up against another challenge in our modern culture. Following Christ is not the fast track to happiness 24/7/365. Being a Jesus groupie doesn’t give you a pass from pain.

Newbies can think the opposite of this. “If I follow Jesus who loves me than I’ll experience love—boundless love.” This IS true. Following Jesus and connecting with the Son of God is the way to experience boundless love, but this boundless love doesn’t mean you won’t get broken a time or two (or twenty) along the way.

I know a few Christians who, even in their plight, still sing their sincere praises to God. Others of us—actually most of us—cry out when we stumble, when we experience a roadblock, or when it just plain hurts big time. This means we are no less Christian. It means we are human. What sinks us actually sets us free. The joy—yes, the joy—of being in pain is that at some time we are able to look behind us.

In afterthought, we know how grateful we are to have a God who listens to us shout, gripe, moan, and even curse Him who was there, even when we couldn’t see or experience Him. And we get this knowledge from the low places. It wasn’t just that God was there in our down and out time; it was that God loved us through the hardship.

Listen to these select verses from Psalm 42. “My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” … Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:3,5-6).

The psalmist recognizes the reality of his tears shed. We should, too. He also identifies those who insult him and his face with the question, “Where is your God?”

Speaking to his own soul, our writer then goes inward. “Why are you cast down, O my soul?”
Some of us have pains that will never heal on this side of life. We don’t have broken bones or super bad colds that are defeated in time by wellness some of us have a lifetime prognosis of Not So Good Stuff. What then? Is there a gift of hindsight when our burdens never stop?

I say yes. When we focus not on self but on service, which is what Christ did on the cross by setting us free from our eternal, never-can-break it sin, he shows us what we who follow him can do, and that is serve others.

Our lows teach us to spot the lows in others. Helping others who suffer with listening and with love is what makes the Christian soar. Be one who soars, even—or especially—in your sour times.