The Roller-Coaster Ride Of Life (3)

Sun, 28 Oct 2018

‘He has made everything appropriate in its time.’ Ecclesiastes 3:11 NAS

Life on the peaks is a picnic, but what about life in the pits? In times of turmoil, struggle, heaviness, doubt, loneliness and failure, where do we go? In his classic, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis describes a senior devil talking to his nephew Wormwood about their mutual enemy, the Lord. ‘Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never in greater danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our Enemy’s will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys!’ When our pit is deep and God seems to be nowhere around; when our prayers rebound like empty echoes, what then? ‘No longer desiring’—all positive emotions are shut down. ‘But still intending’—nothing’s left except the sheerest of gutsy faith we can muster just to stay afloat. When it doesn’t even feel real anymore, we trust, and by faith and nothing else, ‘still obey.’

Our senses get distorted, even numbed, in life’s pits. We begin doubting the reality of God’s Word and our standing with Christ, believing our emotional pain is evidence that we’re lost and things are hopeless. These desert seasons leave us feeling distant, alienated from God. Such sensations appear credible to pit-dwellers, while thinking and speaking faith sounds and feels unconvincing. But the enemy knows his cause is never in greater danger than when a child of God ‘looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys!’