Some Christians feel they should be immune to the setbacks and problems of life. Such is not so. God does not guarantee that we will be shielded from the “bad” things that happen to all flesh.
However, He does give us what we need to overcome whatever adversity comes in our lives. Strength is ours, but also we are expected to have the correct attitude in order to survive whatever comes our way.
My solution is a four F one, adaptable to each individual situation. By realizing that, we can do much to alleviate paralyzing problems we encounter.
First is FATE, or you might just call it FACT. Some situations we cannot control, they just occur. An example of this is the pandemic that hit the world this year. Many, I am sure, just curse the virus and those who began it (think China). But no one is immune to it; it is a fact of life in 2020. Acceptance of this is not fatalism, it is just recognizing that there are things that adversely affect us over which we have no control. However, the lockdown of the economy was not just fate. Those were caused by individuals in positions of power who decided to attack the virus with an untested method. For many of us, though, this was, again, a fact we had little control over.
Other examples abound. Some diseases seem to afflict some while others are healthy without any problems. For those of us who are prone to different afflictions, they can be in the category of fact — it just is.
Sometimes other people, for whatever reason, have hurt us. If such instances occur, and are not precipitated by us, it becomes fact or fate. Do we bewail our situation, shake our fists at the heavens and weep over our misfortune? Sometimes life just is, and sometimes we are hurt through no fault of our own. There are times when lives seem to go off the rails because of how we are treated; we need to know that the rain falls on “the just and the unjust”. Each of us can recount some of these times in our lives.
What, then, should be our reaction to that which is, the Fate that befalls us? For the Christian, the second F is FAITH. Those who have a strong belief in God and in Christ have the ability to rise above the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. We know, that whatever pain and setbacks we face can be endured and overcome. Over a lifetime, I have witnessed that, time and time again, Christians have triumphed over the bad times in life. These may have been a death of a loved one, a broken marriage, financial trials, times when others seem to enjoy inflicting hurt on us, or estrangements within a family.
Faith does not mean we will not shed tears, nor does it mean that we will not have heartaches from time to time. But it does mean, to coin an old phrase, that we know that “this, too, will pass”. We do not have to spend our time in misery because of circumstances that are sometimes beyond our control. Faith will lift us over the bad times. I have seen those who cannot seem to move on from the setbacks they face; they wallow in the sorrow, anger and despair over facts of life they cannot change.
Our third F is conditional. That is FORGIVENESS. It is conditional because there will be times that there is no one to forgive for what happens to us. Although I hesitate to use myself as an example, such occurred to me earlier this year. I was in the hospital with a serious illness in January and it seemed that bad health and setbacks followed me like Nemesis for months. Who do I blame? My doctor? My family? My enemies? No, this just happened.
However, there are many times when adversity can be traced to specific individuals or circumstances caused by others. When we are hurt, abandoned, ill-used, hated, we can see where the blame lies. Remember the old adage, “It doesn’t matter how you play the game, it’s where you lay the blame!” What do we do with those times when we can pinpoint the people who have hurt us?
Forgiveness is a must for Christians, even if it is hard to do. Jesus’ model prayer, what we call the Lord’s Prayer, is very specific: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. While on the cross, He asked for His Father to forgive those who were about to crucify Him.
We are to pray for those who despitefully use us, as Jesus instructed in Matthew 5.
We will not be able to forget that which has befallen us; time may diminishes the pain of those memories, but those memories are always with us. Forgiveness will be one of the greatest healing balms for any hurt, but we will have to work at it. Again, Peter was told he had to forgive “seven times seven”. Also, you must forgive even if those who hurt us DO NOT ASK FOR IT!
And forgiveness must sometimes be given to ourselves. We are, at time, responsible for our own problems. It has been well said that most of our problems are caused by the person we see looking back at us in the mirror. There are time when we have been so egregiously wrong we have trouble with guilt over our actions. But here we must also forgive ourselves, or we will always live in the past and in our transgressions. This does not mean we can be superficial about our own actions, as many have been by claiming (with good reason) “I’m only human” and go on as if our deeds needed no repentance.
Bu at no time should we blame God. He has omnipotence over the earth, but He also allows each of His children to experience the full panoply of life. To blame Him is to turn the truth of creation on its head, where the created rules over the Creator.
Our final F is the FUTURE. We cannot, by any of our exertions, change what has happened in the past. We wouldn’t want to, even if some of us become nostalgic and desire to sing with George Burns, “I wish I were 18 again!” Most of us don’t want a do over, for we might mess up even worse.
What is left but the Future. We are left with Satchel Paige, the legendary pitcher, who claimed he was always in a hurry because someone was chasing him. We need to run ahead of the past, not live in it.
Our Future is many times what we make it to be. We can plan, knowing that what James wrote in his epistle is true, always with the idea if “God wills it”. But we know, if we learn from our setbacks, and mistakes we can make what comes better than what was. From the well known hymn we must take our motto: “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future”.
Predicting what will happen to us in the years ahead is a risky venture. My look at this year, posted in December of 2019, was woefully off. Most of that was because of events not foreseen, like my illness or the pandemic.
If we remember that FATE is beyond our control, that FAITH enables us to get through the darkest valley, that as God forgives us, we must FORGIVE others, then we can walk into the FUTURE with our hand in His, knowing the future will hold many good things we may not yet envision.