Hassled?

Friends, when life gets really difficult, 

don't jump to the conclusion that God isn't on the job.

1 Peter 4:12

A young mother texted me this morning that her son was admitted to the hospital last night with stomach problems and they are still waiting for a definitive answer as to what is wrong.  A friend of one of my daughters is struggling with alcohol addiction, another feels isolated and all alone.  One of my colleagues is stressed over health issues, another is trying to recover from hip surgery and just lost her grandfather--his funeral is this morning.  A contractor friend is teetering on the edge of financial collapse, while another has already declared bankruptcy.  Gas prices are soaring, causing food prices to rise right along with it.  So many people around the world are just trying to keep their head above water.

The Apostle Peter says, "Hey - when life is hard, don't automatically assume it is God's fault!"  How I wish my mother [and my mother-in-law, for that matter] had somehow gotten that message.  To Mom, everything that happened in life was directly from God's hand - either as a blessing or as punishment.  When life is looked at that way, everything unfortunate that happens, from simple sickness to tragedy, is a direct result of sin in our lives.  The ancient peoples often believed that way, and even the people in Christ's time tended toward that philosophy.  

  

In the book of John, chapter 9, Jesus is about to heal a man who was blind from birth.  The disciples asked Jesus, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  Jesus immediately said, "No one is at fault that this man was born blind!"  When my oldest child was born with congenital heart defects, our parents rushed to the hospital to be with us.  I will never forget my mother-in-law's first words as she came through the door.  Looking directly at me and pointing a finger in case someone didn't get the point, she said in Spanish, "This happened to the baby because of her."  It took me a while to realize what Peter already knew:  no, God did not do this to me, either to punish or to "teach".  

We live in a world ravaged by sickness, disease, tragedy, and, as in the lives of my daughter and the blind man of old, all kinds of environmental, drug, heredity and health factors that combine to cause various birth defects.  The man in the Bible was born blind, my daughter was born with a heart condition, and Jesus healed them both - not to teach us a lesson, but to forever bless our lives.