Opening scripture: Isaiah 55:6-11
I can remember very well the days that all of my children were born. They were special days, obviously. But the days my last three were born were had a little extra kick because I was able to be in the delivery room, to be there when those 3 took their first gulps of air. Now, even though I had gone to the Lamaze classes, I wasn’t fully prepared for what would happen. Actually, I found out that they lie in the Lamaze classes! I got through each one okay, though, except for the slight heart attack I had when the doctor almost dropped my youngest! And in the process of watching those deliveries I also learned some valuable lessons.
I learned to have a healthy respect for the professionals who work in maternity wards. They know what they're doing, and they do it well. They also help dads who forget their duties.
I also found out why it's called "labor". It's work. Angie went through a great deal of pain as the contractions came closer and closer, and then when pushing began she really worked hard. She did have epidurals for each one, but by the time she was ready for birth they had pretty much worn off.
And, I found out a little about love. Real love.
Carol Burnett once said giving birth was like taking your lower lip and trying to stretch it over your head. It seems to me that that would be easy compared to the actual process. Labor comes in all shapes and sizes, and in all time frames. One woman I talked with said that her contractions came less than a minute apart the ENTIRE labor! But regardless of the length of labor they all have one thing in common: Pain. Big pain. Really intense pain. Pain that has been described by some as "death-like". It takes a great deal of courage to face this pain, but thousands of women do it every day.
Facing this pain takes a great deal of love, too. It takes love on the part of the mother, realizing she's going to have to go through such tremendous agony. And it takes love on the father's part to stand by and watch his wife go through it. Thousands of men, who love their wives intensely, spend that time coaching and fetching ice chips and massaging and waiting and watching.
And, of course, child birth isn't the kind of job you can just abandon at any point. But in the delivery room you never hear anyone scream "Why me, Lord?" They know the answer already. It's necessary pain. But how many times do you hear someone use that phrase over other pains?
Get stopped for speeding while you're trying to make an important appointment? "Why me, Lord!"
Stub your toe going through the living room late one night? "Why me, Lord!"
Lose a job? Get cancer? Have a heart attack? A loved one dies? "Why me, Lord! Why did you do this to me?"
A long time ago, back in early Biblical days, we got hooked on the theory that God punishes us when we're bad and rewards us when we're good. That sounds pretty good, until you consider that it's not exactly how God operates. Lots of folks have tried lots of arguments to prove it, but those arguments just don't work. Still, we seem to need a reason for our suffering, for our problems. God is convenient, so He gets the blame a lot. And why?
One: The need for punishment. We think God is reaching down and slapping us for being bad or for not being faithful enough. If we could just cross enough t's and dot all the i's things would work out alright. If we could just get our act together the good times would return and life would be a bed of roses.
Two: Because God is seen as arbitrary. There are some who believe that God dispenses good and bad on people with no apparent purpose or design. "I think I'll take this person's job away," God tells an angel. "And maybe I'll give this one a heart attack that'll disable him for the rest of his life." There's a giant dartboard up in heaven and God puts His hand over His eyes and throws a dart to determine fate.
Three: Because it seems that God doesn’t really care. He lets these things happen because it doesn't matter to Him if we suffer. "God must be a terrible being if He let something like the Holocaust happen," is one usual line of reasoning. We can think of so much to blame God for, to curse Him for. Almost everyone, at some time or another, has looked skyward and uttered a frustrated "Why" at the Creator.
But we must understand that bad things don't happen because we're bad and good things don't happen because we're good. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 5:45: "that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
But we’re human, and we look at it from our standpoint. And from our standpoint it makes much more sense to work on the punishment and reward system. Just as we do with each other. But don't believe it.
"But what about Cain," you ask, "and Aaron's sons who offered strange fire. And there's always Ananias and Sapphira. Weren't they all punished?" And of course the answer is yes, they were punished for disobeying God. Herod was stuck with worms and died a horrible death. But there are several cases of people who were bad, downright evil, and weren't necessarily punished here on earth. Does the name Abraham ring a bell? Before he obeyed God by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac he showed his complete lack of faith by lying to Pharaoh to save his skin. Of course there's the matter of Jacob getting Esau's birthright through subterfuge, and getting Isaac’s blessing through a total and complete lie. And what about Paul's persecution of Christians before his conversion? Or Peter's denial of Christ? Or how about the woman taken in adultery? I seem to remember Christ forgiving her.
Crossing the t's and dotting the i's won't make everything okay. Doing a horrible sin doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll wake up the next morning with leprosy. God works on a different level. He is willing to bless us all, He DOES bless us all. We just have to look a little harder sometimes. God occasionally hides the biggest blessings of our life in a cocoon of pain. Like birth. "Brothers, count it all joy when you fall into different trials," James tells us in James 1:2.
If you look through the Gospels at the accounts of the healings Jesus did, you’ll find an interesting fact: Not one of the people that Christ healed asked the Savior why things had happened the way they did. They just accepted the healing. In Matthew we see Blind Bartimaeus calling out: "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me" until he gets Jesus' attention. "What do you want me to do?" Jesus asks. At which point Batimaeus launches into an intense theological discussion about the sin his parents or he must have committed for him to have been blinded from birth, right? Of course not! "That I might receive my sight," he answers. And his sight was given to him.
Do you suppose that the widow of Nain in Luke 7 may have been intensely sorrowful over the death of her son? I know that Jesus felt her sorrow. He raised the son from the dead and "delivered him to his mother." There was no questioning of the Lord as to why her husband and son had both been taken, only rejoicing at the return of the son.
Sight was restored, crippled legs were healed, lifelong maladies were cured, the dead were raised, and all without a "why did this happen to me in the first place?" And by the way, have you ever noticed that the miracles of healing cut across all economic and social lines? Batimaeus was a beggar, Jairus was a ruler of the synagogue, the centurian was a Roman official. Sorrow, pain, and death touched everyone just as it touches everyone today.
It seems that we spend a considerable amount of time these days searching for blame instead of searching for answers. When we get that bonus on our job, or we have a healthy baby we tend to want to thank God for those blessings. But it's much harder to find a blessing in pain. There has to be a reason why we weren't blessed in that instance.
But are we sure we weren't blessed?
My dad died at the ripe old age of 51. Heart attack. One day he was with us and the next, boom!, he was gone. He was a good man, a great personal worker and teacher who loved the Lord and loved to tell people about Him. The night before his death he was out visiting and teaching. A very productive individual, responsible for leading many to baptism (by the way, as far as I know he never physically baptized anyone), and yet he was taken in the prime of his life. Where's the blessing in something like that? I must admit that I couldn't really find one to begin with. In fact, it's took well over twenty years to get some kind of inkling. One blessing, I'm sure, is the impact that his death had on people. There were some who were sitting on the fence and have since come to the Lord. His death affected me in many ways, including putting a renewed fire in me to tell people about the Lord. That's led to mission work in Haiti, preaching and teaching at different congregations here in Georgia, and having 2 children who are willing to go to foreign countries to share the message of the Lord. Could some words that I say end up being a blessing for you? Could the work that my middle daughter did in Scotland and my youngest son did in the Philippines bless someone who’s never known the Lord? If so, was the death of my dad worth it? If it furthers the kingdom of the Lord, you bet your eternal life it was!
I believe that part of our problem is the fact that we aren't willing to look deeply for answers to our "whys." It's appears that it all may boil down to how we handle the situation. "Why me, Lord" isn't really the question. "What do you want me to do" is more like it.
The scripture we read at the beginning of the lesson touched on this. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, your ways are not My ways,” God told Israel, “My ways and thoughts are higher than yours.”
When we ask “why me,” we’re trying to box God in, to make Him adhere to our ground rules. But He doesn’t work that way. He knows more than we can ever know, He can see how we are blessed and can be blessed by what happens in our lives. “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”
The choosing of Esther as queen may have seemed strange to everyone, but God knew what was going to happen, and Mordecai understood that God knew. Esther had to learn the lesson.
The death of Lazarus seemed odd to the disciples and, I’m sure, to Martha and Mary. But Jesus knew better…it was for a purpose.
It was the same with Peter, made especially evident after the resurrection. Let’s turn to John 21:15-21 to recall the event: So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, [son] of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love You." He said to him, "Feed My lambs." He said to him again a second time, "Simon, [son] of Jonah, do you love Me?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love You." He said to him, "Tend My sheep." He said to him again a second time, "Simon, [son] of Jonah, do you love Me?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love You." He said to him, "Tend My sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon, [son] of Jonah, do you love Me?" Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, "Do you love Me?" And he said to Him, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You." Jesus said to him, "Feed My sheep. "Most assuredly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry [you] where you do not wish." This He spoke, signifying by what death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to him, "Follow Me." Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, who also had leaned on His breast at the supper, and said, "Lord, who is the one who betrays You?" Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus, "But Lord, what [about] this man?" Jesus said to him, "If I will that he remain till I come, what [is that] to you? You follow Me."
That is a powerful passage, jam-packed with great lessons. But I want to concentrate on something that’s very easy to overlook.
Jesus tells Peter to feed His lambs, then to tend His sheep, then to feed His lambs. Next He told Peter that he would die a martyrs’ death. Peter must have understood this, because he turned to see John and said “what about this man?” Jesus’ answer was simply: “What happens to John doesn’t concern you. You follow me.” I’m sure that may have been perplexing to Peter, but he accepted it and lived it, as evidenced by his reaction when he was imprisoned. The angel of the Lord, who’d been sent to rescue him, had to wake him up. I don’t think Peter was too concerned about bad things happening to him.
We won’t always understand why God allows bad things to happen. Sometimes, we just don’t need to understand. What we need to do is remember that God doesn’t cause them, it’s evil, sin, that causes them.
Let’s be honest. The problems that we see in the world today with radical Islam can be traced back to sin. It all began with Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, with someone trying to “help” God but instead gumming up the works.
The important thing to remember in times like these is how we react. How do we handle these situations, how much do we lean on God for guidance, comfort, and strength instead of blaming Him for not caring? How much do we let His light shine out to the world, let them see Him in our reactions?
It isn’t about us; it’s about God and about others. When they know how much we depend on God, when they see the strength we can draw from our faith, it might be the catalyst they need to move them in His direction.
“Why me, Lord?” Because You love me, because you want to see me grow in faith, hope, and love. Because You trust me and know that you can use me.
