suffering

Missing the Boat at SeaWorld

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What are we to make of the tragedy at a local theme park this week?

A seasoned trainer of killer whales got dragged under water by her ponytale by a male Orca known for a history of living up to its name.

The debate in the news remains alarmingly this-worldly in terms of animal rights, conservation, ad nauseum.

As always, the Scripture speaks profoundly on an altogether different level.

In response to Job’s complaints in the face of unspeakable suffering far exceeding that of the family of Dawn Brancheau who dared tether Tilikum to her less-than-containable leash, the God of the universe said this:

“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook
or press down his tongue with a cord?
2 Can you put a rope in his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
3 Will he make many pleas to you?
Will he speak to you soft words?
4 Will he make a covenant with you
to take him for your servant forever?
5 Will you play with him as with a bird,
or will you put him on a leash for your girls?
6 Will traders bargain over him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill his skin with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?
8 Lay your hands on him;
remember the battle—you will not do it again!
9  Behold, the hope of a man is false;
he is laid low even at the sight of him.
10 No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.
Who then is he who can stand before me?
11 Who has first given to me, that I should repay him?
Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.

Leviathan is the English translator’s best guess for a difficult-to-translate Hebrew word often rendered as a large sea animal. Orcas fit the bill. They are among the hugest of the dolphin species weighing up to six tons and measuring up to the length of a school bus. Males are particularly large and aggressive. Tilikum serves the SeaWorld community for his stud services and large-splash-making capabilities  – a crowd favorite indeed.

Until this week when he took a 40 year old handler so very easily to her watery grave.

If you seek to see the world through heavenly-minded eyes, the lesson seems plain. Who dares to trifle with a killer whale? No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up. Ms. Brancheau, I am certain, dared not in the slightest to stir up the mighty beast floating in the pool before her. Even so, her proximity to creation’s majesty cost her nothing less than her very life. Word to the wise.

Word to the wiser still. Who then is he/she who can stand before God? Let the question sink in. Who then is he/she who can stand before God? None. I say it again, none. If dear Dawn (and my heart goes out to her grieving family and friends) could not stand poolside by Leviathan and escape with her life, who among us can pretend to put God, who owns the whole of heaven, including Orcas, great white sharks, lumbering hippos, and the rest of His wondrous and fearsome creation, in the dock and claim some legitimate argument with His sovereign administrations in their life for which we might better respond, He gives and takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).

May we not miss the boat along with the masses debating the pros and cons of killer whales consigned to captivity as if the only things we should consider lie along an animal rights plane and no other. Far more can and should result from this tragedy than that. Let nature and its grandeur speak to us internally rebuking our sinful pride. Let it speak to us vertically recalibrating our hearing and seeing such that we hear and see Him and thus, along with Job, despise ourselves and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:5-6).

When You Can't Get Beyond the Remorse

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Of all the components of pastor’s conferences these days, I enjoy among the most the Q & A sessions that normally come in the mix. On Wednesday of this week in Minneapolis, Pastor Clay, Kevin, and I listened to all the speakers at the Desiring God conference answer a series of questions related to the topic of the pastor and his role of promoting the joy of his people in God. You may listen to the entire session here.

One of the questions had to do with suffering that results from your own sins. What do you do when you can’t get beyond your own remorse for sins that have hard consequences?

John Piper seized the opportunity to relate how he always goes to Psalm 107:10-16 in such situations.

10 Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
prisoners in affliction and in irons,
11 for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
12 So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;
they fell down, with none to help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and burst their bonds apart.
15 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
16 For he shatters the doors of bronze
and cuts in two the bars of iron.

Clearly these suffered due to their own rebellion. God bowed their hearts with hard labor as a result. What did they do? They cried to the Lord in their trouble. And imagine this! He delivered them from their distress.

So the counsel of God’s word when our own folly leads to grievous consequences is pray. Our gracious and compassionate God specializes in deliverances, even from our own sinfulness. And when he does deliver, give thanks for his steadfast love and his wondrous works to the children of men!

This morning’s Oxford Club study in chapter twenty one, These Inward Trials, of J. I. Packer’s book, Knowing God, dovetailed so nicely.

God can bring good out of the extremes of our own folly; God can restore the years that the locust has eaten. It is said that those who never make mistakes never make anything; certianly, these men made mistakes, but through their mistakes God taught them to know his grace and to cleave to him in a way that would never have happened otherwise. Is your trouble a sense of failure? The knowledge of having made some ghastly mistake? Go back to God; his restoring grace waits for you (IVP, 1993, p. 251).

Who of us can say that we have never erred in such a way so as to bring suffering upon our own heads? Perhaps even now you feel the sting of mistakes made that seems so gripping you can’t find a way out. Cry out to the Lord. Seek his restoring grace. And give thanks for his steadfast love and his wondrous works when the deliverance comes.

Another Servant of God in a Fight with Cancer

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I learned recently that Pastor Matt Chandler of the The Village Church was diagnosed with a tumor in his right frontal lobe. He collapsed with a seizure on Thanksgiving. Since then he underwent an operation to remove the tumor. Things have spread. Further treatment options are under consideration.

Pray for Pastor Matt and his family, OGC. You understand better than most. Take a moment and watch the little over four minute video by Matt here. So much of what he says was exactly where God had me in ’05 in my battle with head and neck cancer.

I wish him, his family, and his church well. If God is pleased to bring him back, he will come back with greater force.

Matt, my heart goes out to you. I’m in your corner. Fight the good fight. Dying is gain but for the sake of others it may be best to remain.

Shafia's Story

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It’s Friday. Last week I called it “Freeloader Friday.” It’s my day off so I am borrowing from the work of others to post today. But after watching this piece on Timmy Brister’s blog, I couldn’t bear to make light of things at all in the subject line.

As we enter another Advent season starting this Sunday, join me for a healthy dose of perspective from what it means to follow Christ in a place like Pakistan. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body (Heb. 13:3).

Puritan Power & Perspective on Waiting

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GurnallFor some reason I’ve made it a habit to turn to the Puritans first thing each morning this year in my abiding in Christ time.

Moody Press published a collection of daily readings in spiritual warfare from the writings of William Gurnall called The Christian in Complete Armour (1994). Numerous times the meditations within its pages have framed my perspective for the day and boosted my reserves of spiritual power and strength.

The entry for November 21 this week proved particularly meaningful for me and I thought I would pass it on.

Wait on God as long as you have to, until He comes according to His promise and takes you out of your suffering. Do not be hasty to take yourself out of trouble. . . . The fullest mercies are the ones we wait for the longest. Jesus did not immediately supply wine at the marriage of Cana, as His mother had asked, but they had the more for waiting awhile.

Hope assures the soul that while God waits to perform one promise, he supplies another. This comfort is enough to quiet the heart of anyone who understands the sweetness of God’s methods. There is not one minute when a believer’s soul is left without comfort. There is always some promise standing ready to minister to the Christian until another one comes. A sick man does not complain if all his friends do not stay with him together, as long as they take turns and never leave him without someone to care for him. . . .

The believer can never come to Him without finding some promise to supply strength until another is ripe enough to be gathered.

They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength (Isa. 40:31).

Freeloader Friday

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Today is this pastor’s high holy day off. I used to do Mondays. But I got into too much trouble brooding over the Sunday before. Fridays work out a whole lot better for me and my bride.

I still want to post however, but not have to work at it.

So I think I will start a Friday tradition of freeloading off of others’ work and commend it to you instead of composing my own stuff.

Pastor Kevin DeYoung has a provocative post on the Gospel Coalition Blog entitled Be Careful How You Pray.

In it he quotes Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs. Here is a sample from the post, one of two comments from Burroughs:

There are many things which you desire as your lives, and think that you would be happy if you had them, yet when they come you do not find such happiness in then, but they prove to be the greatest crosses and afflictions that you ever had, and on this ground, because your hearts were immoderately set upon them before you had them.

You can read the rest of the post here. It’s not long and definitely worth your time.