I Think I’ll Pass

After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1 Peter 5:10 NASB

For a little while – Pie in the sky, by and by.  That’s what I really want, right?  Oh, sure, I’ll have to put up with some bad things before I get there, but in the end, all that really matters is the heavenly reward.  That’s what I’m waiting for.  Just get me out of here and let me have that mansion waiting for me.  Oh, and by the way, if I must be here, make sure I’m healthy and wealthy.  After all, You’re the God of blessing believers.

If any part of the previous sarcasm fits your view of God’s expectations, oh, my, you need some help!  Did you notice what Peter wrote?  The whole phrase, “for a little while,” is just one Greek word, olígos.  It means “small” or “few,” “of little importance.”  That does not mean the suffering was small.  It means that from the eternal perspective it wasn’t very important.

But we don’t live in the eternal, do we?  We live here, in the “now.”  And now we experience some pretty big sufferings.  Yes, of course, we can tell ourselves that over the course of eternity this may not matter much, but don’t say that to someone who just lost a child, to someone who has stage four cancer, to someone who knows extreme poverty, to someone who experienced traumatic sexual abuse.  Don’t talk to them about God’s great eternal plan.  Hurt hurts now!  Peter knew that.  He knew abuse, rejection, physical pain—and he still wrote these words.  In the midst of the “now” it’s hard to remember the “then.”  That’s why we need Peter’s encouragement, not so we can pretend it doesn’t hurt now but so that we can remember it won’t hurt later.  Not so that we can fortify our resolve and endure but so that we can still hope in the God who cares.  Bad things happen.  But that’s not the end of the story.

It’s important that Peter describes God as “the God of all grace.”  pases cháritos.   Not just “all” grace, but “every” grace.  Every joy, every gift, every favor, every thing to be thankful for, every whole-person jubilation.  We are not called to be the blessed ones.  We are called to be the ones who live God’s grace.  That means being the peacemakers between God and His estranged creatures.  Peacemakers are not the ones at peace.  They are the ones caught in the middle.  They are the ones who are shot at from both sides.  They are the ones who suffer on behalf of others.  They are the in-betweens.  Just like the Messiah, who was crucified.  The clarion call of the faithful is to suffer—for a little while, but nonetheless, to suffer.  It’s not always a test.  Don’t think that just because you suffer God is trying your faithfulness.  Sometimes that’s true, but there is also suffering simply because you are in the in-between.  You stand for something not yet a full reality—the kingdom of God on earth, and because you stand for that, you suffer.  You know what God desires and it hurts not to see it become a reality today.  You suffer because others don’t see what you see.  You suffer because the world has gone astray.  It might not matter when it’s all over, but it matters now.  God trusts that you will display His character in the broken world.  In fact, if you can display His character during suffering, your testimony to His grace will be even more powerful.

Topical Index:  suffer, grace, a little while, olígos, pases cháritos, 1 Peter 5:10