Week 1 | Saturday | Romans 8

Present sufferings

Paul talks about creation groaning, and our 'present sufferings' being nothing compared with the glory we will find in Christ when we die.

On the way home there's a building near the ferry terminal that always gets me. It's a 2 story fibro + metal frame house which is little more than a portable you see on building sites; it's at the end of the (local) airport runway, and surrounded with truck depots, low level scrub and general dirt. There are trucks constantly banging by, and trucks in China are neither quiet, nor clean.

The people that live there have a house. Maybe it's a family to a room, but there's only 6 or maybe 8 rooms in the building. The dorms at our factory have 3-4 people per room, who are totally unrelated. The Chinese have accepted this is the way they live, and they don't complain. I doubt any of these workers will ever own property: I think they all pay board. Maybe the people in the fibro house own it, I don't know.

Is that 'accepted' behaviour so, and so different to mine, simply because it was learnt? I think so. I think we have an ability to accept our situation, and to fight against it in many cases is hopeless. How can a Chinese worker ever hope to have the kind of 'wealth' I have? It's aeons apart.

Two things here - faith is the great leveller - I'm of as much importance to God as a Chinese worker, which gives me hope and joy; and the second is this, (and a little more complex) - 'present sufferings' can mean everything, or nothing, depending on viewpoint and scale.

Paul of course talks about striving in faith, and human persecution from people who wanted to kill Christians.

I think suffering, like so many other terms, has been hijacked by capitalism to effectively mean 'lifestyle' - and in fact 'lifestyle' is a god of sorts for me.

Now that's dyed in the wool for me that I'm a westerner with a mortgage and a family, and that I can determine my financial level by the kind and amount of work I do - It's almost impossible to conceive how selling everything and going to live as a worker in a fibro box would benefit anyone, and certainly I don't want to do that:

But it makes me wonder about the notion of suffering: and by that - do I have any idea about the scope of this glory that Paul talks about - my impression is that as my suffering increases, the glory becomes exponentially greater: which makes me wonder if the biggest problem we have today is that everything's too easy.

I really don't think I understand the peril we're in.

Indeed, by fully understanding the depth, utter completeness and unfailing darkness of a sinful death - only as that increases does my understanding of the value of grace increase. And then when Paul writes

Rom. 8:37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

...and I begin to remember again what an amazing thing this faith I've got is. How precious and beautiful it is; how I need to treasure it.

I can't MAKE anyone else get this either. To help someone understand it I NEED God to be working on them so that when an opportunity arises there's something that clicks when we talk about hope, and life, and answers to dark questions - which means I need to pray. And I've been poor.

God, make me twisted and crunched up for my friends. Wind me up like a spring, be at my gut like a heart attack when I think of them going without you.