Why is life so hard?
Few questions press harder than this one, and the writers in this collection do not dodge it: they trace the difficulty back to a real event, and then show what God is doing inside the hardness rather than promising an escape from it. Their answers run in two directions at once — why the world is like this, and why God leaves His own people in it.
Where the hardness started
The commentators do not treat trouble as the way things always were. They point back to a break early in human history, after which the world itself changed character.
Hamilton SmithIn spite of all man's fine talk, the fact remains that God says man fell, that sin came into that fair garden of delights, and man was driven out under sentence of death. "So He drove out the man" still stands written against Adam's race. And experience tells us that this world we find ourselves in is no garden of innocent delights, but a world of sorrow and toil, a world of thorns and thistles, a world of pain and death.
Bigger than your circumstances
Your struggle is one voice in something far wider. The strain runs through every level of the living world, and even those who have God's Spirit are not exempt from it.
H. B. Coder"The whole creation groans" under present conditions — the human, the animal, and the vegetable — everything that has life. Endless disease, oppression, corrupt governments, and lawlessness afflict the human. Cruelty, human greed, and sickness afflict the animal. Insects, fungi, and all kinds of enemies increasingly affect the vegetable world… Even we Christians, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the redemption of our suffering, decaying, dying bodies.
Trouble is not evidence that God has left
A hard life is often read as a verdict — that something has gone wrong between you and God. Kelly reverses that reading, and then names two different reasons God's hand may be on a person.
William KellyThey may have thought the fiery trial was some strange thing that had happened to them. But on the contrary, it is more true that the Lord is grieved with a Christian when He leaves him without trouble… The Lord has two objects in view when He lays His hand on a Christian in the way of chastening: it may come either because there has been something wrong, or because he is in danger of it and hardly feels it. When David was out of trouble, he fell into a snare… The desire to get out of trial is a perilous thing for the soul.
The purpose of the fire
If God allows the pressure, what is it for? Smith answers with a picture from the refiner's furnace, and makes a careful distinction about what the fire is testing.
Hamilton SmithThe Father does not cause His children a needless tear. The need is to prove our faith. This does not mean to prove whether we have faith, but rather to make clear the preciousness of the faith we have. Gold is not put into the fire to prove that it is gold, but to bring out the precious qualities of the metal… The soul may have true faith, but when the trial comes these blessed qualities of faith — submission, patience, steadfastness, confidence and dependence upon God — become visible.
Why it feels like nobody cares
Hard times carry a second wound: the sense of being alone in them. Boyd names that feeling exactly, and does not treat it as a sign that the feeling is true.
James BoydThe things that happen to us on the way, the evils that surround us, the sorrows that come on us with overwhelming power, the bewildering tangle of unwelcome events, the cruel thorns that seem to pierce the very centre of the soul, tend to give us the impression that nowhere in the whole universe is there anyone with love enough and power enough to give us the mercies we feel we need. We are liable to think that no one cares for us… But all the exercises we are passed through are, as I have said, for our eternal profit.
The answer offered to that loneliness is not an argument but a Person who has been through it.
C. H. MackintoshJesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His circumstances are changed, but His heart is not. His position is different, but His sympathy is the same. "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." There is a perfect human heart on the throne… and He gives Himself to each one of His beloved on earth as though He had only that one to look after.
Where the threads are going
The separate hardships look random from inside them. Mawson pictures them as work on a loom, where the pattern belongs to someone else.
J. T. MawsonHere are a thousand threads, but see, they are working together into a beautiful fabric. How is that done? Every thread is part of the designer's scheme, every thread is controlled by the weaver, and they work together to one end. So everything, all things, have their part in God's bright design for those who love Him. Here we rest in our present trials, and though we groan we do not grumble.
Summary
- Cause. Life is hard because sin entered the world; thorns, toil, pain and death describe the place we actually live in, not the place God originally made.
- Scope. Your trouble is part of a whole creation groaning — humans, animals, even plants — so hardship is not proof that you have been singled out.
- Purpose. The fire is not asking whether your faith is real; it brings out what is already there: submission, patience, steadfastness, dependence.
- Company. A heart that has been through every sorrow now sits on the throne, and gives Himself to each of His own as though He had only that one to care for.
- End. A thousand tangled threads are being worked by one weaver into one design — which is why we can groan without grumbling.