A World of Hurt

It is hard to be grateful when you’re looking into the jaws of mind-bending pain. A heart attack sidelines your brother or AIDS infects your son. You change the diapers of your twelve-year-old who is developmentally disabled. You hold onto marriage vows despite a cold shoulder and an empty bed. You stick to a tight budget and put off vacation for another year. You clamp the lid on raging hormones and make a date with the TV and dinner-for-one. You look at other Christians who seem to be able to smile in the midst of great hardship, and you wonder, Where do they get the strength? How can they have such a grateful spirit?

©chalabala

Humans are inclined toward ingratitude—we compare our lot in life with others and either admire them from a distance or burn with envy; we miss the job promotion and collapse in discouragement; we feel overwhelmed with home duties and complain bitterly.

When hit with hardships, many people choose one of the following:

Giving up: Some people shelve their hopes and, like a horse yielding to a heavy harness, they stoically resign themselves to “pulling the plow” of dreary, daily routines. But we are not animals. It grieves God to see his children live an existence of hopeless resignation.

Making suffering the focus: Some people yield control to their circumstances, not to God. Suffering becomes the main object, and they cave in under its pressure, coddling quiet feelings of submerged rebellion. They make their problems the focus, rather than focusing on Christ.

Becoming bitter: Hebrews 12:15 cautions, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” When we allow bitterness to take root in our lives, we close ourselves off from the grace God offers. A bitter person poisons not only his life but also the lives of others. He may make his hardships his idols; but “those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs” (Jonah 2:8).

People who give up, focus on their own suffering, and become bitter have separated God from the suffering he allows in their lives. They forfeit the very grace God wants to shower on them!

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