Today's daily lesson comes from Psalm 119 verses 67, 71 and 72:
67 Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I keep your word.
71 It is good for me that I was afflicted,
that I might learn your statutes.
72 The law of your mouth is better to me
than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
Yesterday I talked with a friend from our church who has spent the last year battling cancer. Today her husband is going in for a surgery to remove an abnormal growth in the inner part of his brain. "I don't know about you," she said, "but I'm trusting in the LORD. There's nobody else to turn to."
Pain and suffering are difficult facts of life; but they are also the pathways through which we learn to place our trust in God. Though I would not necessarily say God Himself sends suffering our way, certainly in His providential way God uses these things to draw us closer to His heart and take stock of our lives. As the psalmist said, "It is good that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes."
On the night of Martin Luther King's assassination, Robert Kennedy gave an impromptu and emotional speech wherein he recited his favorite poem -- one which no doubt spoke to his own pain in having lost a loved one to an assassin's bullet. The poem was from the Greek tragedian Aeschylus:
"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
Inevitably there is the awful pain of suffering and affliction. But there is grace to be found there too. And there is wisdom -- the wisdom that teaches us to trust in the LORD because, as my friend said, in the end there really is nobody else to turn to.
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