Before Bed Notes 1:06AM

I had my first entirely free Thursday during Spring quarter in 2 years today. It was glorious. Homework got done, but so did fun. I had a good day. Kaleb and I played catch….I’m not great, but nor am I terrible. He’s got some game though. I went on a walk with some friends and had a dinner with a friend of mine. He told me I should write this down (what I’m about to write) So I’m going to. Maybe you’ll like it. He seemed to.

He was talking to me about how there’s all sorts of shitty (my word, not his. I feel the ugliness in the word conveys my meaning better than other words do) things in life. There are people who are crippled, people who get cancer, and people who experience a variety of other crap in their lives that are no fault of their own. “Ought we not get mad at God for these things?” He asked. I thought about this. On one hand yes. These things suck. Some people through no fault of their own experience the worst things….but perhaps that’s not what we should be thinking about. A tangent if you will allow it.

I watched Patch Adams over break with my mom. It was a great movie. The man loved Jesus and other people. There was a scene that stood out to me in the film. Patch was in a mental ward and interacted with this genius man who was there because he was too smart. He held up four fingers and asked Patch how many he could see. Patch said, “four”. The man got angry and called Patch just another idiot. Later Patch went to see him and asked about the fingers. The man told him to look beyond the fingers. When patch did that and didn’t focus on the fingers, he saw eight fingers. The man said something to the effect of “You must look beyond what is right in front of you. In doing this you will see things and experience a greater reality filled with that which other people cannot (or choose not to) see.”

Firstly what I’m about to say I learned in class. So I’m not the genius here if this comes across as great otherwise, it was me that screwed it up. The author of a book I read echoed this scene from Patch Adams. He said when we look at the problem of evil and suffering in the world we rightly acknowledge it’s horror and tragedy. However, most of the time in doing so that is the extent of what we see. We fixate on the bad and we get tunnel vision. We fail to look at life in terms of the overarching story of redemption that the bible lays forth for God’s people. At the end of the bible, everything is okay for the people of God. Every tear is wiped away. God dwells in physical reality with us. The author (Scott Bader-Saye) went on to say that in looking at life in this manner (without thinking of the whole story) it’s easy to become destroyed by grief and pain and be overwhelmed by the suffering of the world. If we were to look at the problems we see in light of the whole story we take to be true, then our tragedies are blunted. People experience pain, grief, and suffering in frustrating amounts through no fault of their own. It is important that this is acknowledged. This is part of the story…but it is only part of the story. It is not the whole story. The whole story ends with the Lord Himself redeeming our pain and suffering through the perfection of our relationship with him.

Yes. There are shitty things in life. Acknowledge that. We exist in a broken world filled with things that hurt us in every way possible. Existence is no bed of roses without thorns. It is no walk in the park. It is often tragic. Yet, don’t stop there. Also acknowledge that the truth we (as Christians) live into is a truth that includes an end where things are set right. The brokenness doesn’t have the last word. Be encouraged to live knowing that the end will redeem what hardships we experience now.

One more thing: The truth also has a part where God is with us. It is not just us dicking around accomplishing nothing and suffering in a broken world. It is God working through us and with us to make the world a more Christ-like place while we are in it. Just because the end will redeem everything that is broken doesn’t mean that redemption begins in the afterlife. It begins here and now. It’s just like the Kingdom of God. The story of redemption is both “within you” and “here” and also not yet.