Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: hardship

  • Psalm 119:143 – Trouble!

    Psalm 119:143 – Trouble!

    Trouble and anguish have found me,
    Still I delight in your commands.

    I’m going to let a Psalm take over commentary for today.

    1 In you, LORD, I take refuge.
        Never let me be disappointed.
    2 Deliver me in your righteousness, and rescue me.
        Turn your ear to me, and save me.
    3 Be to me a rock of refuge to which I may always go.
        Give the command to save me,
        for you are my rock and my fortress.
    4 Rescue me, my God, from the hand of the wicked,
        from the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man.
    5 For you are my hope, Lord GOD,
        my confidence from my youth.
    6 I have relied on you from the womb.
        You are he who took me out of my mother’s womb.
        I will always praise you.
    7 I am a marvel to many,
        but you are my strong refuge.
    8 My mouth shall be filled with your praise,
        with your honor all day long.
    9 Don’t reject me in my old age.
        Don’t forsake me when my strength fails.
    10 For my enemies talk about me.
        Those who watch for my soul conspire together,
    11   saying, “God has forsaken him.
        Pursue and take him, for no one will rescue him.”
    12 God, don’t be far from me.
        My God, hurry to help me.
    13 Let my accusers be disappointed and consumed.
        Let those who want to harm me be covered with disgrace and scorn.
    14 But I will always hope,
        and will add to all of your praise    .
    15 My mouth will tell about your righteousness,
        and of your salvation all day,
        though I don’t know its full measure.
    16 I will come with the mighty acts of the Lord GOD
        I will make mention of your righteousness, even of yours alone.
    17 God, you have taught me from my youth.
        Until now, I have declared your wondrous works.
    18 Yes, even when I am old and gray-haired, God, don’t forsake me,
        until I have declared your strength to the next generation,
        your might to everyone who is to come.
    19 God, your righteousness also reaches to the heavens.
        You have done great things.
        God, who is like you?
    20 You, who have shown us many and bitter troubles,
        you will let me live.
        You will bring us up again from the depths of the earth.
    21 Increase my honor
        and comfort me again.
    22 I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, my God.
        I sing praises to you with the lyre, Holy One of Israel.
    23 My lips shall shout for joy!
        My soul, which you have redeemed, sings praises to you!
    24 My tongue will also talk about your righteousness all day long,
        for they are disappointed, and they are confounded,
        who want to harm me.

    Psalm 71, World English Bible, slightly modified by me.
  • Psalm 119:87 – Almost Finished

    Psalm 119:87 – Almost Finished

    They almost finished my time on earth,
    but I did not abandon your precepts.

    Mitchell Dahood again provides a good translation:

    They nearly exterminated me from the earth,
    but I did not forsake your precepts.

    Mitchell Dahood, Psalms 100-150, Anchor Bible, p. 166

    Dahood continues on page 183 with a discussion of the text, dealing the final phrase “in the earth” or “from the earth.” For some time there was a suggested emendation (textual correction not reflected in any manuscript reading) change “in” to “from.” That emendation then received support from a Dead Sea Scrolls fragment, but Dahood maintains that there is good linguistic evidence for translating the Hebrew prefix for “in” as “from” in many cases.

    There! A dose of language study, however superficially written and documented!

    The claim that one is doing right while bad things are happening is not a rare one in scripture. It is, in fact, the big issue in Job. While Samuel-Kings repeats a refrain about evil bringing bad results and good behavior bringing good results, Job discusses the contrary situation: Job is declared righteous in the text by God, yet he suffers. Job’s friends thought he was obstinate and arrogant for maintaining his innocence. God doesn’t challenge Job’s innocence, but rather simply challenges Job with presence and power.

    One of the problems of living together with other people is that our suffering, if attributed to human action, is not always attributed to our own action. Bad actors make many people suffer, irrespective of their behavior.

    When faced with a bad situation, it’s not the time to be forgetting good actions. If I’m walking along a mountain trail and find myself in danger because someone else has damaged the safety rail, or damaged the trail itself, it’s not the time to forget rules of safety. In fact, I need to be more carefully because someone else was either less careful or actively destructive.

    “Everybody else was after me and almost got me, but I stuck to your rules.” It’s a good loose interpretation of our verse today, but it’s generally good practice as well.

    When I was younger, I would try the excuse that all the other kids were doing something. It didn’t go far with my parents. But in society as a whole I see this as a justification for bad behavior all the time. The other folks are doing it, so why not me? Or perhaps the other folks are doing it, so I have to do it or I’ll lose.

    Rather than seeing this as some kind of boast, perhaps we ought to see it as an example for ourselves. When other people do it wrong, we should stay on the right track, right to the end. I suspect no good is accomplished by ignoring God’s principles and rules, no matter how many other people we see doing it.

    Reflect: Can you say that you haven’t taken up the approach of the other guys?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:71 – The Blessing of Hardship

    Psalm 119:71 – The Blessing of Hardship

    It was good for me to have suffered hardship
    so I could learn your statutes.

    We tend to complain a good deal over hardship. We don’t like it. We ask why God allows it, or perhaps does it.

    But hardship is worked into the basic structure of the universe. That’s where we get the law of sowing and reaping. Our standard condition has us destined to work hard for many things. This is, in fact, how we learn most things.

    Two stories from my childhood and youth come to mind. When I was just eight years old I announced that I wanted to learn to use a typewriter. This launched a family debate. Would I ever learn to write? Could I actually learn to use the typewriter at that point. At that time “typewriter” meant a manual machine and took a certain amount of energy to use.

    My dad made the decision. I’d be allowed to learn to type, but only if I would complete every single lesson in the Typing Made Simple workbook perfectly. There was no number of allowed errors. I could redo the lessons as many times as I wanted to, but I couldn’t move forward until I had completed it without error.

    I honestly don’t know whether my dad expected me to succeed or not. There was no pressure other than the one requirement. That was a hardship! I had to do some of those lessons several times. But I learned something that has served me all my life. In high school, I attained a top typing speed of over 120 words per minute without error.

    Again, when I wanted to raise goats, my parents simply made sure I understood the work involved. There would be no morning when I didn’t have to get up early to milk. There would always be things that I needed to do at various inconvenient times. I understood, and I got the goats.

    Now raising those goats was hard! In my spare time I had to install an electric fence. Then I had to deliver the milk to customers up to a mile or so away, which I did either on foot or by bicycle.

    The point of these two experiences is that they are not extraordinary. Nobody was trying to make my life difficult. The hardships involved were not that terrible. Some people have told me the “perfection” requirement was outrageous, but I disagree. It gave me a goal and a standard, and it was attainable. The work done to attain that goal contributed to much of my work since, including the speed with which I am typing this.

    We can make a distinction between causing trouble or allowing trouble. I think that is a distinction of limited value. If someone is picturing God sneaking about looking for ways to make their life difficult, that might be theologically problematic. But God has created a universe in which everything from stars and planets to human beings are shaped by things that put pressure on them.

    And what do we suppose is necessary to make us ready for eternity?

    “But grace!” you say.

    Yes, God’s grace saves us. Yes, God’s grace is sufficient. It brings us into the family. But that is the beginning of a journey, not the end.

    “And grace will see us through,” you say.

    Yes, indeed it will. But it’s going to see you through the process of growing you up, of preparing you for eternity in the presence of God.

    Be “carried on to perfection” (Hebrews 6:2) for a few more steps today!

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:67 – Afflicted

    Psalm 119:67 – Afflicted

    Before I was afflicted, I went astray,
    but now I keep your word.

    What is your reaction to difficult times? I’m not a terribly optimistic person, and I don’t take to it all that well.

    I’ve noticed that modern Christians have inconsistent responses to trouble. On the one hand, they’ll say that if God is in it, everything will be there. Sometimes they go so far as to say that Christians shouldn’t really have any trouble if they’re “in God’s will.” I always run this view up against the lives of the people listed in Hebrews 11. No, it’s not always easy for God’s people.

    On the other hand, people will say that the person who’s having trouble is being attacked by the devil, usually because that person is doing things that threaten the devil’s kingdom. I always want to ask how they’re sure it’s not because they’re not in God’s will.

    Experience suggests that you will have hard times and good times. That’s how the universe works. I believe in both God’s blessing and in God allowing us to experience difficult times. So there is a third option. Perhaps things are going wrong not because I made the wrong choices, but because others did, and I’m collateral damage.

    Let me suggest a response to affliction, which can be any sort of difficult season in your life. Rather than trying to figure out just what God is doing, perhaps we should simply ask what we, ourselves can do.

    No matter whether you are suffering the normal vicissitudes of life on this crazy planet, or God is trying to teach you something through hardship, or the devil is trying to block you because he doesn’t like what’s you’re doing, the best next move is to do right as best as you can while relying on God.

    And that reliance on God is important. It isn’t an excuse not to act. It is an assurance that when you act, you will accomplish more than you could do on your own. It is also the assurance that even in failure, you’ll be part of God’s family.

    Exodus 2:14-15 tells us that when he realized that the fact he had killed an Egyptian had become known, Moses was afraid. Hebrews 11:27 records that he left Egypt, not afraid of the king’s wrath. That’s the faith view of our actions.

    In what ways do you need to work and trust today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • David Alan Black on Dealing with Hardship

    I posted on my company’s blog today about writing to communicate, but I didn’t cover one important aspect: Transparency. Transparency isn’t a technique or a policy. It’s an attitude and a moral commitment. It says, “I’m not going to lie about how my life is going. I’m going to let people see what is real.” A speaker, teacher, or writer will be forgiven many, many faults if he or she is transparent.

    I’d like you to read one of Dave’s posts today. If you are one of the many who have appreciated Dave’s ministry and teaching, you’ll want to read it for the update in any case. I have Dave’s permission to copy from his blog any time I want in marketing his books, but this isn’t about marketing, and I feel it should be read in the context where it is. Right now it’s at the top, but if it has moved (those who know how Dave blogs know what I’m talking about), just scroll down to Thursday, June 13 and then to 6:02 AM.

    And follow the directions … you’ll find it worthwhile.

    And do remember to pray for Dave and Becky!