DAILY DEVOTIONAL – May 3, 2021
“Hands Up!”
Prayer: Lord Jesus, You came to suffer and know the pain of our sin, even while living a sinless life, so that through Your perfect blood shed and Your rising from the tomb, we would be given hope in the midst of our own suffering and the assurance of eternal life in the glory of God that awaits all who trust in You. Thank You, Jesus. Amen.
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:14-15
“I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.”
Devotional – “Let God Be God”
I have spent a lot of time with people in hospitals who are suffering through some truly difficult circumstances where it seems every time one step forward of progress is made, another problem comes along and makes them feel like they just took three steps backward. In my experiences ministering to Christians who have to endure times of prolonged trial and suffering, all of them want to know why God is allowing such hardship to happen, not because they are necessarily questioning God’s love for them or God’s goodness, but because they want to be assured their suffering has a purpose, that they are not just suffering in vain.
When my own grandmother was in her final year of life, it was a hard year filled with a lot of pain both in her body and in her heart as my grandfather, who by all health standards should have outlived my grandmother by many years, died and went to heaven well before grandma did. During my times with her, grandma regularly wanted me to read her a particular passage from Romans 8. I can’t tell you how many times I read this passage to her, but it was a lot. Here is what some of that passage from Romans 8 says:
“18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 24For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. 26Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
What my grandmother wanted to be assured of, is that there was a point and a purpose to all of the suffering she was going through. Although in the moment my grandmother may not have been able to understand or see how God was using her pain for good, hearing God’s Word say that our sufferings are not even worthy of comparing to the glory God has in store for those who put their faith in the cross of Christ reassured her that the God who loved her enough to die for her is still certainly with her now – even praying for her in and through her pain. As St. Paul said, “Who hopes for what they see?” It wasn’t an understanding of why or how that gave my grandmother peace in the midst of her trials, it was believing the Word of God and the promise that even the Spirit Himself was walking with her, interceding for her, and even using her weakness to help strengthen her faith in God. Every time I would finish reading that passage for her, my grandmother would say, “Well, now tomorrow will be a better day.” Of course, we both knew the pain wasn’t going to be better and that she was still in the process of dying, but we also knew that it wasn’t the lack of pain that would make tomorrow better but the presence of the Lord with us, in his Word, who Himself suffered and died to prepare for us an eternal glory which is what now gives purpose to our own suffering.
In our text from Ecclesiastes, King Solomon is reflecting back not only his life but the lives of so many that he was able to witness and influence, for good and for bad, as the King of Israel. In his reflections, Solomon struggles with seeing the point and purpose of it all much like my grandmother and all of us struggle to see the point of pain and sorrow when we are in the midst of it. Solomon said, “I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.” To put what Solomon is saying into modern vernacular, “Is there a point to all of this life of toil and pain? Has there been a point to the suffering? What has been the purpose of getting up and going to work every single day? What is the point of the savings account? The 401K? All of that stuff in storage? All of this debt?”
When Solomon says that it is an “unhappy business that God has given to men,” Solomon isn’t blaming God for the hardships of life. In fact, the opposite is true. Solomon is blaming himself, us, and all of humanity who through our sin and rebellion against God have brought death upon ourselves and turned the perfect gifts of work, family, relationships, and prosperity that God graciously gave to us into “vanity and a striving after wind.”
When God called Adam and Eve out from hiding after they had sinned, He told Adam and Eve that because they did not listen and obey God everything was now cursed because of their sin; their relationships with each other, childbirth, and working the earth that God had made them stewards of would now be filled with the sweat of painful toil. This is why there is no amount of riches or success or fame or even happiness that will satisfy us in this world. This world of pain and sorrow is only here because of our sin, so looking to anything here for life or joy or peace is a self-defeating endeavor.
We cannot look to anything we can do or have done to find the true meaning and purpose of our life. It is all vanity. We have only to look to what God has promised to do for us and what He in fact has done for us through the work of His Son Jesus on the cross where He paid for the sins of the world. As Isaiah says, Jesus, the Messiah, was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” as we are so that He could bring meaning and purpose to our sorrow and grief through His victorious resurrection from the dead. Solomon finds resolution for the seemingly pointless life of turmoil we all lead by looking forward in faith to what God promised He would do through His promised Savior to come; a Savior who would seek out the sinners who were driven away from the presence of God because of our sin. Solomon says in chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes, “ I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.”
I very much like what Martin Luther says in his commentary on Ecclesiastes 1-3, “We should not find enjoyment in happiness, goods, or our own counsels, or any other thing; only as God gives them should we use them. One should let God have His way. It is not up to us to prescribe the pace, the person, or the manner; if we do, we shall go wrong. This does not mean that happiness is condemned as something evil or vain. What is condemned is human striving and planning when we ourselves want or try to create happiness without respect to the will of God. But as both come from God, so let us use them. Sorrow, happiness, and all such things, whether external or internal, must not be measured on the basis of places, time, etc.; but as they come from God in His complete freedom so one should use them in complete freedom.”
Just as Solomon and Luther came to realize, when we live by faith in God and what He does for us, remembering that, “whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it,” and that both our times of celebration and sorrow “must not be measured on the basis of places, time,” or any other earthly perspective, but instead measured by faith in the finished work of Christ’s victory over the pain of sin and death, that is when we are able to see that it is God who now works “all things,” even the painful things, “together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
Thanks for joining me for another daily devotional, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
