Harrowing Predicaments

 

“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

—2 Chronicles 20:12

On November 12, 2014, two window washers became trapped 68 floors up at One World Trade Center in New York City when their scaffolding came loose. We hear of such events because they rarely happen: a person’s parachute doesn’t open, a trapeze artist dies from a fall because he had no net beneath him, a bridge collapses plunging cars to the river below, etc.

We humans try to cover all eventualities, to make sure we are never caught without the help we need in any situation. We live in a country with regulations for every worst case scenario. We use seat belts in our vehicles, have smoke alarms in our homes, receive weather alerts, equip our boats with life preservers, fly on planes with all the technology available, all to keep people safe in an emergency.

Regardless of the lengths to which we go in order to avoid trouble, we can’t avoid it totally. We must deal with scary diseases, horrible accidents, injuries from war, and a host of other maladies outside our control. We need reminding of how many times in Scripture we read the words, “Do not fear” or “Be not afraid.” Nearly every Book in our Bibles has something to say about fear in the face of overwhelming odds.

We can’t get ourselves out of serious trouble any more than those window washers could. We must learn to trust in a God who has promised to care for us and who will show us goodness and mercy every day of our lives. This bare-knuckled kind of faith comes hard, and only through severe adversity. It tests our dependence on God, as well as His ability to help us.

In a book of Puritan devotional readings, I came upon this paragraph by Thomas Lye:

Faith is the antidote and healer of all diseases. It allows a believer to live in the midst of death. God has extraordinary means to bear us up when ordinary ones fail. He can turn poisons into antidotes, hindrances into furtherances, and destructions into deliverances. The ravens give Elijah food. A whale becomes Jonah’s ship, and pilot too. An Almighty God can work without means. God often brings his people into such a condition that they do not know what to do. He does this that they might know what he can do. God is with his people at all times, but he is most sweetly with them in the worst of times. ¹

God can speak peace to us in the midst of terrible circumstances. He can bring help from strange places. Quite often, those things we often fear never happen, or come in a different form than we expect so that we are able to bear them.

Hear God say, “Trust me in this. I love you,” and experience His peace that passes all understanding.

______________________

1 Lye, Thomas. In Richard Rushing (Ed.) Puritan Sermons in Voices from the Past. Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009. p. 185.