The Lord is my Shepherd

Psalm 23
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
Your rod and Your staff they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You annoint my head with oil.
My cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I love this Psalm. It may have been one of the first passages I memorized as a new Christian 24 years ago. I used it as a prayer for Laura when she was a preteen and young teenager before she went to bed.
We had it printed out for her wedding as a group reading. Beautiful.

Today I am thinking about suffering. I am thinking about willingness to suffer.
I think suffering is easier to endure when you have a true faith in Jesus. It certainly is tested when you experience or witness intense suffering. So many people want to turn away from God in the face of suffering. How wise is that? There is an eternal one who runs the universe. What benefit is it to a small finite person to turn their back on their Creator?
When we suffer, we tend to say one of four things (maybe all of them.) No! Why? Help! and Ouch (or some groans from deep within and many tears.)
Our first instinct is to deny what is now inevitable. We dread the pain we are about to slide into. We fear it will consume us. Our whole world may have changed irrevocably in one moment and we want to get back to the immediate past and restore things, please. Please. No.
We are confused. We all long for the eternal joy and peace of heaven, but it is not here in this life. We feel cheated. We should not have to lose anything. We should not have pain. We hunger for a perfect life. Now it is worse than imperfect. Why me? Why now? Why? Why? WHY!?!? We demand an explanation from the universe. We grope for something to cling to for hope or we sink into despair.
Here it is so beautiful if we have given our lives to Jesus in a true switch--His life for our life. Here we can remember that this is HIS life we are living and He is our Rock. Our circumstances and our loved ones and our job or our health--those things are not our Rock. We are eternal and no matter how horrifying, these things will pass. We can endure all things because we endure forever with Him. I consider how God brought people through horrors like Nazi Germany or Rowanda and all genocide, abuse, and torture. Human beings can transcend these agonies because the Lord made us to live for all time and beyond into infinity. Once created, we cannot be uncreated. We are an eternal soul with a body.
I guess I was just thinking how thankful I am to know and love Jesus and to trust Him implicitly. Perhaps I will experience the most horrifying losses and question him profoundly. He will take me through. Besides that, I'm not LIKELY to experience intense suffering beyond general human experience but all of my suffering, and all of yours, is so deeply personal. We have to look to God for ourselves and find Him there with us because in Him we live and move and have our being. He is close. We usually ignore Him and trust all the world is telling us, particularly what we sense through our eyes, ears, and other senses. As if that reality is "real" and our invisible God is maybe real.
Oh but we will SEE! We will see Him as He is! and this temporal world will all pass away! It will roll up like a scroll. Eons from now, this world will be so remote. Our time here nearly forgotten. Some will be in everlasting life rejoicing. I like what Mark Driscoll says when imagining himself in heaven, living in eternity, sometime in the future and looking back, "I think I wore a hat." Yes, all our experiences will not be the primary ones!
and for those who refused to believe in Jesus as Messiah. Those who refused to trust Him. Those who wanted to keep their lives. Oh my gosh, the horror of it. Eternal damnation, just like the old Puritans warned. Easy to criticize and laugh them off. They were vying for your SOUL! They desired that you would be SAVED!!! It was LOVE of God and LOVE of man that compelled them to insist you come to Jesus--even as they were mocked and scorned and laughed at and dismissed. I feel their pain. I feel the agony of knowing so called Christians loving the world and everything in it and unwilling to die to this life. How horrifying their rude awakening. Now THAT is suffering! This life can do nothing to match it.
(to be continued....)