Yesterday's service was filled with people who were hurting. In addition to the natural disasters at China and Myanmar, we were also stricken by the loss of two young members of the congregation -- a twenty-month-old baby to heart failure and a fifteen-year-old girl to suicide. A sister started the service by praying, "Lord, we don't understand why these things happen, and we will not try to understand things that are never meant for us to understand. We will only trust...and obey."
A phenomenon observed in those whose lives have truly been transformed by Jesus Christ is the supernatural resilience they embody in times of tribulation: "Hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." (2 Corinthians 7-9) What accounts for such unnatural reactions? Do the Christians that these words describe not feel? Are they better actors than others? Are they somehow hypnotized by their self-construed belief that they are able to convince themselves that these pains are not as bad as they seem?
Oswald Chambers discussed this briefly in "Out of the Wreck I Rise". It is a short entry from his daily devotional My Utmost For His Highest. The last paragraph moved me especially. Either history has seen generations upon generations of deluded lunatics who called themselves Christ-followers, or there is something beyond human comprehension that is at work in common men, women and children who are enabled to rise every time from seemingly impossible situations.
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