When you are upright, you tend to look around; you look before you, you look behind and also at your sides. However when you are low to the ground, you tend to look up. Everything is higher than you so you are really forced to look up. And being on your back really puts you in the position of needing to literally look up to the heavens.
Sounds like a strange introduction but it has context. I’ve been thinking about the nature of difficulty and distress in our lives. What is the point, what does it do for us? Clearly God has His purposes in sanctifying us. We all know that. But how does it sanctify us? Why is it necessary that we be brought low? Perhaps we know the reason. Perhaps we assent to the fact that God is working out something in our lives through our trials. Then why is it so difficult to rejoice in the midst of them? Sometimes, perhaps God is gracious and He gives us a particular grace that allows us to rejoice in seeing Him work through our trials. But that doesn’t always happen. And when it doesn’t happen, when we don’t feel the joy of our salvation as we ought, why? Shouldn’t our lives as Christians be characterized by joy? We should rejoice always! Joy is a fruit of the spirit. Is there something wrong with us when we don’t feel joyful and happy as Christians?
Well, I don’t pretend to have all the answers to such questions but I do know this. Being brought low is not merely a matter of circumstance. Sometimes we have need to be humbled in our heart. Sometimes we grow accustomed to merriment and frivolousness. Sometimes our hearts grow accustomed to the feeling of happiness such that we crave it merely for the sensation of it. Seeking joy as a Christian is not wrong. Seeking the feeling of joy or happiness for its own sake is. God, Christ and His Kingdom is who we are to seek, and all other things will be added to us. But if we are seeking the feeling for its own sake, then we have lost sight of what is true. And we have need of a reminder.
Thus if we are ever to be shaken out of our happiness induced high, we must be brought low. We must be brought to a place of weeping. We must be brought to a place of sorrow and destitution. When all is well we have no reason to look up. For we anticipate that what is around the corner will only serve to increase our happiness because we know God to be good. Except when we say that God is good, often it is in response to some good (that we perceive to be good) that we have received from Him. But the goodness of God is not limited to what we understand to be good. If it were then there would be no need for the word or concept of suffering. For God would only give that which is good in our minds to us. But there is suffering. And there is discipline that the Lord allows, brings about, causes (however you want to phrase it) in His Sovereignty in order to bring us low. Sometimes He deems it necessary and good to put us on our backs. For when we are brought to such a low estate we are forced to look up to Him. When you’re in the darkness, you look for light. When you’re in the intense heat of the Sun, you look for shade under which to take refuge. When you’re in the midst of a storm, you look for a stronghold, an anchor upon which to keep yourself from being shaken apart.
Fear not. Despair not at those times when God brings you low. Do not seek to stay in that place of weeping. David said “weeping endures for a night…” However, accept your low estate as a part of God’s wisdom in order to remind you to look, not to your troubles, not to relief, not even to the feeling of joy or happiness, but to Him.
Matthew 11:28-30
28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. 30 “For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.”
1 Peter 5:5-7
“God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, 7 casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you.”
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