“Not even giants of faith get exactly what they want”

Sometimes life presents us with challenges so arresting, so shattering that they change everything.  Inevitably, we all experience the so called “sufferings”, we all feel the pain and we all must go through it.  Our lives are being disordered by it and wretchedly, we are broken into pieces and that the experiences we have made our lives changed not just for a while but it promised that things in us will never been the same, not ever.  The damage has been done and we’ve been tormented and been wrestled with tormenting thoughts: "I'm a good person; how could he do this to me? I keep your commandments, I don't have any other affairs, I help people all day long. I am fighting for what is just and right. How could God let this happen to me? How could God give me such suffering?

“When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” says that expecting the universe to make exceptions for you because you are a good person is like expecting a bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. We are taught to think about God's power as intimidating, we suspect, because when we think about human strength and force, we think of forced power - warriors, despots, pharaohs, commissars, and terrorists. But it turns out throughout history that long-term power is not intimidating; the most transformative power is persuasive.  And at this moment, we think that during the time man starts to reckon about his life sufferings man began to develop a different relationship with God and a different understanding on God’s relationship to our world yet everything is in the process of becoming, and every process - you, me, the world, the cosmos, God - is not a substance, a thing, but rather a distinctive pattern of energy that retains some measure of constancy in the midst of change and growth.  This makes the chaos worth to be transformed into cosmos wherein everything is structured and structuring comes primarily with thinking of not only our present sufferings however, thinking about what will ensue despite of what happened.  It is a challenge and it is up to us how we use our freedom creatively without compromising everything we have at the very beginning.  Vague isn’t it, but if we try to deepen our understanding about how God wants us to be creative in dealing with our life, we may find ourselves defied to confront every suffering road we take and every anguish feeling we undergo because we know everything has its end, everything serves an inspiration for us to move beyond and everything that happened is an opportunity we must take for us to transcend limits.  God never plan to hurt or put His love to test. He never let His people suffer for He himself took the suffering for our sake. And In a way of accepting that every suffering has its own end makes it humanizing. Humanizing in a way that it makes man feel and reflect about his life.  As well as we’re being humanized, suffering force can lead man to look for the center by suffering man becomes weak emotionally and with this weakness man looks for someone to hold on. And he unconsciously or consciously finds strength in love and faith he has for God and the love he gets from the people around him. He looks for the center the foundation of his being for him to find strength.

In contrary, what makes us disturbed everytime we undergo such sufferings, we think about where is God amidst everything that is happening in our lives.  You’ve been faithful to Him, yet why is He silently walking with you, or is He really walking with you? Or leaving you alone?  This made the bell rang.  Apparently, this makes us feel tired of walking with Him faithfully and giving up is accessible.  Nevertheless, what we feel isn’t right and what makes it wrong is that we are too bombarded by the fact that what has been promised to us by God, didn’t work out.  Yes, it might be.  Frankly speaking I tell you, not even giants of faith get exactly what they want, this is found in the New Testament to be specific Hebrews 11:39.  Now you got the picture?  Let’s put it this way, the scripts of our lives are meant just for us and God did it.  As the script writer, God guaranteed us a perfect, a meaningful story and happy ending.  We think that’s it, all is well; everything is made available for us.  Yes, we follow the script, we do everything that is written on it but in the long run some things happen.  We weren’t happy anymore, and it feels like following the script is not the right thing to do and therefore we complain to God and ask so many questions that we failed to analyze the very important thing.  We fail to analyze that God is the perfect writer of our story.  At this instant, is life good with downfalls?  Will our story become a hit without a climax?  The most important questions we need to meditate not just a second but perhaps an hour to reflect on this.  Metaphorically, life is like the scripts of any theatre act or a movie.  Good start yet the story must not be plain because definitely, it would not sell, it would not be a box office hit. It needs to have a climax that will make the story more interesting and worth to watch.  Since in our life, God is the writer, He is not absent or silent but He’s just there, unnoticed and waiting for us to follow the story He had written and most likely He’s waiting for an acknowledgement.  God trusts us so much that He wants us to act innovatively.  It’s not like solving the problem right away in a creative manner yet it’s the act of enduring and feeling the ache happily, and strongly we’ll fight because there is a certain force that encourages us to move forward.  Sufferings are made by God for us to become more mature, spiritually to be specific and everyone who ignores this opportunity missed the most wonderful part of their life.  God trusts us, and so we must trust Him too as all the saints did. Like them, we too will have a happy ending that’s a package God guaranteed.  That’s how God loves us so much, even in the midst of evil and suffering still we are able to recognize His active love in us; the love that trusts, the love that never leaves, the love that never fails and the more that teaches.  It’s just that sometimes; we get too busy thinking about the climax, we’re stuck in our problems that we forget that everything must end.  We prolong our agony by simply staying too long in the area of our life that is not a perfect spot to stay in.  Sufferings are areas in our life that must not be prolonged and suffered like we feel like dying.  It must be the area of increasing our hope, patience, and moving forward to life that is made perfect for us thinking about God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.