Gadfly's Muse

I Hate Flies, ... Mosquitoes.... Buzzing Bothers... But.....

(Fly On Deck, 2008 JAVanDevender)

Let's suppose, say, that I am sitting on a deck, pondering the mysteries of life, gathering insights from the Word, deeply engaged in the primary business that God has designed for man to be about - thinking deep thoughts - and the flies attack... or the mosquitoes... or some other pesky, irritating, interrupting bothersome thing.  It might be a telephone call, especially if it is one of those automated telemarketers... man does that make me mad.

In such instances I am prone to be a bit irrational... a solemn and edifying contemplation of Gen. 3, the curse on Adam, the whole idea of "thorns and thistles... toil" and "the sweat of your brow" doesn't seem to fill my mind at the moment.  What I want is for the "bothers" to go away and let me get on about my business... the business of living MY life the way I WANT to live it, with MY priorities being firmly adhered to... etc. etc. etc.

In other words... I don't do a great deal of thinking about God's Sovereignty.

C. S. Lewis once said - "The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own' or 'real' life.  The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one's 'real life' is a phantom of one's own imagination.  this at leas is what I see at moments of insight: but it's hard to remember it all the time." (The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, 20 Dec 1943, p. 499)

Man that stings!  It stings even more because it is so clearly true.  If I can just get my head around the idea that God sets my priorities for what I have to deal with, and that it is in the interruptions of my life that He intends for me to conform to those priorities, and that my obligation is to respond to His sovereignty with diligence and zeal, then perhaps, just perhaps, I might begin to advance His Kingdom according to His intentions and not my own.  There are times when God wants me to stop thinking and start swatting flies.

He wouldn't have raised them up, buzzing bothers that they are, if such was not the case.  Amen, brother Lewis, but I agree... It's hard to remember it all the time.

Some Sobering Thoughts On Suffering:Reflections on Scott Hafemann's "The God of Promise and the Life of Faith

Scott Hafemann is currently teaching at Wheaton College.  This is my first exposure to his writings and I find him to be an engaging author who is clear, concise and readable.  I differ with several positions he takes but generally consider this book very profitable to read.  As I progressed through the work, it was the section on suffering that reached out and grabbed me, pulled me in and got my heart and brain stirred to prayer and conviction.  I simply seek to share some of those thoughts in this post.

Hafemann is absolutely correct in how he sees the presence of evil and suffering in this world as taking a toll on the Christian life of faith.  Running from suffering, either our own or the confrontation with suffering in others, could be regarded as the prevailing character of our modern sensibilities.  We go to extraordinary measures to prevent our own suffering.  This generation seeks out pre-emptive medical care more than any other.  At the first sign of a sniffle or a new ache or something which might be cancer, we're off to the doctor and often with a high degree of anxiety.  And yet our lifespans and quality of life are far greater than any of our fore-fathers.  Perhaps that is the problem.  Life is good and that brings with it the fear that somehow that "goodness" is temporary.  We live with a sense of impending disaster and so we seek to shield ourselves from suffering in ourselves or even that of others, if possible, lest their misery somehow gets in the way of our own sense of well being.  We are pitiful in this regard.