February
1, 2017
Wednesday, Week Four, Year I:
Hebrews 12:4-15; Psalm 103; Mark 6:1-6.
When The Going Gets Tough, God Keeps Us
Going
Today’s reading begins by repeating yesterday’s last
line: “In your fight against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of
shedding blood.” Hebrews is
addressing our very common experience of feeling sorry for ourselves because of
what we have to go through in life. And let’s be real: some of the things we or
others suffer are horrible. We are not “whiners” if we “grow weary or lose
heart” and are tempted to “abandon the struggle.”
Hebrews
warned
us against that yesterday. But today Hebrews urges us, first, to put our
sufferings into perspective: “You have not yet
resisted to the point of shedding blood.” And second, to see the positive side
of suffering. Hebrews says to
look on it as training. The word
translated as “discipline” is paideia, which
has the same root as “pedagogy,” and refers to instruction or training,
especially given to a child.
Hebrews talks
as if God sends suffering: “Whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.” (The New Jerusalem Bible says, “The Lord
trains those he loves”). But Hebrews
here is doing what God often inspires the writers of Scripture to do: entering
into the mind-set of the readers. The fact is, many do blame God when they
suffer. Some see it as “punishment,” others just as proof that God does not
love them, or simply isn’t a loving God at all. Hebrews is saying, “If you think God is putting you through all
this, can you see something positive in it?” Whether God “sends” suffering or
just leaves people free to act in a way that imposes it on others (or
themselves), God does use it. He draws good out of it. Hebrews urges us to see the potential for growth in what we endure.
“Perseverance is part of your training.”[1]
The author goes further and says
we should endure suffering as something permitted by a loving father. “God is
treating you as his children — what child is there whom a parent does not
train?” Of course, any pain associated with training “always seems painful
rather than pleasant at the time.” But Hebrews
assures us: “Later it brings forth the fruit of peace and uprightness in those
who have undergone it.”
In other words, God never permits
lemons without giving you what you need to make lemonade. And this is true even
of sufferings that are no laughing matter. So “lift up your drooping hands and
strengthen your weak knees. Make straight the paths you walk on.” Straighten up
and fly right — “so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather
be healed.” If your nose is out of joint, change your attitude. Then what was
crippling you will become your strength.
This is not just human “positive
thinking.” Verse 10 (omitted) says. “Our human fathers were training us for a
short life and according to their own lights. But God does it... so that we may
share his own holiness.” Our goal is to “be Christ” and let Christ grow to
“full stature” in us. This involves the mystery of the cross – which by grace
(the “gift of sharing in God’s divine life”) we can both endure and embrace.
“Strive for peace with everyone,
and for that holiness without which no one can see the Lord. See to it that...
no root of bitterness should begin to grow and make trouble; this can poison
many.”
Meditation:
How do I deal
with setbacks, opposition and hardship? How
could I?
[1]
Verse 7 in the New Jerusalem Bible,
which, with other approved translations, is being used often in these
reflections.
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