You’ve heard repeatedly that God causes all the circumstances of your life to work together for your good and His glory. But do you truly believe it? Sometimes it is difficult. If a trial is sufficiently unexpected or painful, it can leave you wondering why God allowed you to face such turmoil.
The only way to deal with the suffering positively and proactively is to view it through the eyes of God. So ask God to help you see your circumstances from His perspective. Everything won’t be completely clear, but you’ll have confidence that the Savior who redeemed you will not abandon His work in your life.
Always remember that you are the beloved child of the living God. If sorrow touches your life, the Lord knows all about it and catches your tears (Psalm 56:8). Yet He is strong enough to take your pain and loneliness and produce something worthwhile out of them. He will use the adversity you’ve experienced to help you reach out to others who have been hurt and are struggling.
This past Sunday was All Saints Sunday and many of the churches celebrated the lives and witness of past saints, especially our loved ones in the church. Most Sundays our church concerns itself with matters related to living out the Christian faith, but this is the Sunday of the church’s year, when the church gathers and gives thanks to God for past people, for dead people. It’s All saints. A major activity for us this day is remembrance. Our memories of the lives and witness of past saints — all the saints — are the means whereby the church not only gives thanks to God for those who walked the path of faith before us but also a means whereby our present living of the faith is critiqued, judged, and prodded onward.
When John is given in today’s passage from the Revelation to John a vision of the eschaton, a glimpse into Heaven, what he sees is a huge, multicultural multitude, dressed in white, parading with palm branches, singing: a procession around the throne of the Lamb. John asks, “Who are all these people?” He hears, “These are the ones who have passed through great tribulation but who have kept the faith, who kept worshipping and serving God in spite of any pain and difficulty they went through. Now they sing and shout in triumph.” Surely the vision is meant not only to be a peek into our future in God, but to be also a memory of the past, a time when many paid for their faith in blood, yet most important (for us) is that is an encouragement for the present. Remembering the tribulations undergone by saints from the past, we are given strength for the present.
The church’s memory and our remembrance of all the saints are a major part of our witness to the world. Saints are those who demonstrate in their lives that gospel living is not an impossible ideal. The saints are those who are engaged in martyria, “witness.” That’s where the word “martyr” comes from. Their deaths are not the substance of their witness. Rather, it is the saint’s life even unto death that is the saints’ public testimony and argument. Because of their gifts, we don’t have to make up the faith on our own. We don’t have to struggle to find the words to say to God. May God help all of us to witness what is best for the world and to fulfill God’s purpose for all people. Praise and glory to God alone!
— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. Rev. Don Kim is pastor of Monroe United Methodist Church.
