Bear Trap

God scares me. I trust Him and believe His plans are for good but His plan still scares me. This is an appropriate fear for in the first chapter of James we see that we will have trials. This is not a maybe situation, it’s a guarantee. “but God is good and you can trust Him!” some say. This is very true but most often said in naivety of it’s full meaning. God is good. He is about His glory and if you chose to be on His side this means ultimate glorification of yourself as well…. ultimate. God makes us no promise of health and healing in this lifetime. Welcome to Christianity 101, point one: This is gonna hurt. Yes I know that’s not the end of the story but it’s pretty much all we are experiencing right now. We are guaranteed trials and then told to count those trials as joy. “Here, you get to have cancer, aren’t you excited?!”  Or worse, “Here your kid gets to have cancer, doesn’t that make you so joyful?!” Why would we count that as joy? Our response to hideous circumstances… joy? It doesn’t make sense…. unless you know the end of the story. And this is why reading God’s word is so very important. Your going to be lost in utter despair unless you know and tell yourself every day.  “ though our outer self is decaying, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 2 Cor 4:16-18 Your going to be crying on the floor, lost and hopeless unless you know in your heart that Jesus said many times in scripture and in Rev 21:5 "Behold, I am making all things new." You just aren’t going make it, walking around with a fake smile if you don’t see 2 Cor 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

You have to know the end of the story. God wins, He puts death to death, all things are made new!  I don’t know how one lives a single day without thinking about these promises. This world is too dark, it’s too dead and diseased for us to see any hope without wise words that lead us to understanding. We have jumped into a bear trap, twelve feet deep with spikes at the bottom. Here we lay, broken bones sticking out of the skin, blood everywhere screaming for help. God is here separating us from the spikes, tearing our flesh away to free us. Someday we will be lifted from this pit and we will be given new bodies but for now God is doing the bloody work of hurting us, to free us …..and it’s terrifying. “No God just leave that stake in my arm, it’s gonna hurt too bad to free my arm from the bear trap!!!”  I’m afraid of what it will take to set me free and to make my heart new. It’s going to hurt. But I know the end of the story. I know that these light momentary afflictions lead to an eternity of joy, eons of love, family and perfection. Gosh… how can He call them “light and momentary” when moms carry their babies for nine months, so big it hurts,  worrying about the diagnosis and then after a birth of being cut open spends weeks watching her little ones, too little, too weak, struggle to grow, breath and eat. If these things are “light” than the good, the pleasure of eternity must have no measure to its vast, glorious weight.  It must be that much better than our current sufferings that God calls the death of a child, father, loved one “light”. What a comparison. If death is “light” and heaven has an “eternal weight”  doesn’t that give us little hope? Doesn’t that give us a little joy?  So right now I’m in the pit, Jesus have your way, do your work, let your word separate my bones from my marrow (Heb 4:12), no matter how much it may hurt. God give me the faith to endure it.