Meditation 239
Romans 5: 1-11
Paul must have been having a good day when he wrote this part of the letter to the Romans. He is boasting in the hope of sharing in the glory of God. Not only is he boasting in sharing in the glory of God, but he boasts in sufferings because of what they can lead us to hope, and our hope in God is well founded. Paul is able to rejoice at what God has done for him by giving him abundant life. I don’t think that this passage in Romans is encouraging us to seek out suffering in order to have our endurance, character and hope increased, but it is a reminder that God is present in everything.
One of the ways we may be experiencing suffering these days is through the challenges brough to the life of church congregations. At the Life and Mission Agency meeting I attended via Zoom this week, we looked at a model to help us plan how to help congregations in these changing times, and to do so there was a graph made that contrasted church culture with the culture in which we live. One of the descriptions of some congregations is that they are in quicksand. That is, they are at best maintaining without being able to make the church seem relevant in an increasingly secular society. As we looked at this image, I thought of books I had read in which the main character gets caught in quicksand. The way out is to lie back and relax, like floating on the water. The more a person kicks and thrashes the more he or she will be pulled down into the quicksand. It occurred to me, that for those of us who find our congregations suffering to be relevant in these secular times, that the solution is for us to rest on God. Another observation that was made at LMA was that some congregations that have limited resources and few newcomers are NOT in quicksand mode, because they are sharing their faith with the community at large, and finding joy in ministry.
There are other sufferings that we experience in our personal lives, and when we bring these circumstances to God, God will walk with us through the suffering. We live in a world where things go wrong. We heard in the news this week of a beautiful teenage girl who took her own life because of the depression she suffered, we know of poverty that grinds people down, and personally we feel our own grief and worry at what life brings to us. If we suffer alone and rail against the suffering, we can be overcome by it, but if we ask God to help us cope, the experience of suffering can produce endurance. Paul tells us that endurance produces character and character produces hope. It is a process that is being described. When we come to God in prayer about the suffering that has come to us, God will be with us as we go through the stages that bring us to hope.
We are told that hope does not disappoint because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Our hope is grounded in God’s gift of the Holy Spirit.