“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.” (Psalm 119:67) It would be sadistic to say we enjoy affliction. It would also require us to embrace an Eastern worldview and philosophy. As Christians, we are not forced to either deny physical reality or prevented from looking beyond it.
Affliction and sorrow are part of this world and, because we are inhabitants of it, they are part of our life. However, in Christ, we have the privilege of seeing all things from a larger point of reference. When we understand God’s sovereignty, we find a place to consider a higher purpose at work. As the Psalmist mentioned, if our hearts are seeking God’s purpose we can even discover an eternal value to affliction.
We don’t like to admit it, but we get consumed and lazy in our comfortable lives. We fail to fulfill the Lord’s plan for our life because we are too busy determining what ‘we want’ instead of asking Him to show us His will for our life. It is easy to get tunnel-visioned and only see things that promote our comfort.
Life has a way of making us inattentive to Spiritual things. We are like a young student sitting in class with headphones on. The teacher may be teaching invaluable lessons, but we can not hear her because we have our loud music playing in our ears. The teacher has to come and remove the headphones so that our attention is drawn back to her words and chalkboard diagrams.
At times, the Lord uses sorrow to remove our spiritual headphones. Then we begin to hear the lessons given to us and understand the diagrams on the chalkboard of life. Though the lessons may come through sorrow, they prepare us for future decisions we will face in life.
Sorrow has a way of redirecting our life by teaching us what is important. Like the words written by Robert Browning Hamilton: “I walked a mile with pleasure, she chatted all the way, I was no more the wiser, for all she had to say. I walked a mile with sorrow, never a word said she, but oh the things I learned from her, when sorrow walked with me.”
Many of the most valuable lessons always come when we walk through a valley of affliction. As C.S. Lewis said, “God whispers in our pleasure, speaks to our conscience, but shouts in our pain. Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Pleasure has a way of luring us to sleep and making us aloof to the important things in life. Sorrow shakes us from our slumber and compels us into the heart of God.
We would be ‘sick puppies’ to laugh at the sorrow that comes from suffering. Likewise, we would be fools to refuse to learn lessons from it. Jesus is the only one who can properly teach us as we experience… A Walk With Sorrow!
