The Purpose and Remedy of Our Afflictions

UV 1437/10,000 The Purpose and Remedy of Afflictions
For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.
Lamentations 3 v 33

God does not willingly afflict us. Only when His hand is compelled by the hardness of our hearts that He allows affliction, grief and pain. When He sees and knows for sure that we will not learn any other way but the hard way, He allows us to learn through pain or hardship. What parent likes to see his or her child suffer or cry in pain? The Lord is much more compassionate than any of us. But for a greater good, for the sake of our eternity, He does permit human suffering and pain.

When we face and suffer calamities, troubles, sickness and pain, we should examine our hearts, our ways and test them. We should find out where we fall short of God’s Word and try to set our hearts and our ways right with Him. When our prayers are not answered, we should ask ourselves in what way have we offended Him that the heavens seem like a bronzen cloud from which our prayers are bouncing back without an answer. In such times, we should revisit our covenant with God, our relationship and evaluate our lives against the yardstick of His Word. Job-like suffering is often sent our way to draw us to His bosom, so that we can weep on His shoulders and we will know that His comfort, love and mercies are for real and not imagined. When our hearts are cut and bruised, He applies His balm that produces healing. We emerge better than before, more perfect and stronger. He becomes our portion in these difficult times. In other words, He Himself is our medicine that we consume. Instead of drinking water or H2O, we should drink H2W2- health, happiness, wealth, wisdom. He Himself is our health, happiness, wealth and wisdom.

During times of affliction, we should not get angry or bitter with the Lord. If we wallow in our sorrow and allow it to turn into deep depression, we are allowing ourselves to be caught in the trap of the enemy of our souls. Instead, we should humble ourselves. The Lord is good to those who hope is in Him. So we should continue to hope that the Lord will restore our health, our blessings, our better days. We should not struggle with Him but yield in silence and quiet submission to Him. At the end of the day, we should know that His love is unfailing, His compassion is unstinting and endless. We should anchor ourselves in the bedrock of His Word and buoy ourselves with faith and hope. He will surely lift our grief and assuage our feelings. He will renew our lives like a snake drops its old dead skin and grows a new one. He renews His promises, His mercies every morning like fresh manna. The manna that the Jewish people gathered getting spoilt overnight is a metaphor to show that every day we need to be fed by the hand of the Lord as best He alone knows. There is a specific message the Lord wants to communicate to us each day. Each day brings its own troubles and challenges but the Lord will give us an appropriate and adequate word to handle it, to endure it and to overcome.

Prateep V Philip