“I have told you these things, so that in me you will have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
If one wanted to put this passage on a bumper sticker, the “Shit Happens” bumper sticker would work nicely – though that might not fit nicely in the church bulletin announcing the lesson for the day. Commenting on this passage today, Oswald Chambers puts it a bit more appropriately: “An average view of the Christian life is that it means from trouble. It is deliverance in trouble, which is very different…. God does not give us overcoming life: He gives us life as we overcome.”
Intellectually, I understand this. Stuff happens. Still, it occurs to me that I go through life being upset when stuff (the stuff I know will happen) does happen. In this sense, I want the fruit without the tree, the juice without the squeeze. Stuff does happen. Stuff will happen. I assume that the Psalmist was thinking down this path when he wrote:
“God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.” Psalm 46:1-3
It occurs to me... 