This is a world of adversity

While doing my pastoral duties, I get to meet people with burdens beyond comprehension. Sometimes they talk about issues I struggle with myself.

I find it amusing that people generally think pastors don’t go through similar experiences as they do.  
However, the fact of life is that pastors are children of Eve as well, and they are also prone to succumb to the pressures this life exerts. Seeing a drunk person staggering across the road, C.S. Lewis, an accomplished pastor in the history of Christianity, was heard saying: “There I go but for the grace of God”.

Some gynaecologists sense abnormality if a child does not cry the moment it is released into this life from its mother’s womb. And those endowed with wisdom explain it differently from those in the health field. The wise say the child cries because it senses that it is getting into a world of adversity.  

The world of adversity this world indeed is. But adversity is sometimes necessary to help us fulfil our ultimate destiny. My prayer partner, responding to my message of encouragement, writes back and says: “I have discovered that God uses growth through pain to make our faith more effective.”  

The response reminded me of the words of Paul to the Church in Corinth after going through hardships in Asia himself: “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.”  
And he says further: “But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises from the dead” (2 Cor. 1:8, 9).  
I am the first to admit that it is sometimes difficult to see the hand of God in our lives when we experience hardships and adversity. Yet it is during those moments of adversity that God is close by. The Psalmist confirms this: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, although the earth give way and mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though the waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging” (Psa. 46:1-3).  
Times of adversity are only preparation grounds for a higher calling. A friend of mine sent me a powerful message this past week about three trees, and I wish to share it with the readers of this column because I gathered a lot of courage from it.
‘On the woods in some hill grew three trees. These trees were discussing their hopes and dreams. The first tree dreamed of becoming a treasure chest which the owners could fill with gold, silver and precious gems.
The second tress dreamed of turning into a big ship which could be used to safely transport kings and queens to all the corners of the world.

Then the last tree dreamed of becoming the tallest and the straightest of all trees in the forest; a tree that people would be able to see from any place to give them hope about the heavens and God. And years after praying that their dreams would come true, a group of woodsmen came to the hill and hewed the trees down.
However, each tree was used for a purpose contrary to what they expected. The first tree was curved into a feed box for animals, and was placed in a barn and filled with hay.

The second was curved into a small fishing boat, and was sold to fishermen in a small lake. The third was cut into large pieces, and left in some secluded place in the dark.  

After some years, when the trees had forgotten their dreams, there were new developments.
A man arrived with a heavily pregnant woman to the barn. And a few moments later the woman gave birth to a Baby in the hay in the feed box made from the first tree.
The tree felt the importance of the event when discovering that it turned out to be a crib for the Greatest Treasure of all time.
After a storm that threatened to bury a group of fishermen in some fishing boat on a lake, a tired Man was awoken from his deep sleep by men complaining: ‘Master carest thou not when we perish?’  
The Man woke up and said: “Peace be still” and the storm immediately subsided.  The second tree rejoiced that it had carried the King of kings.
Through some streets of Palestine, the same but now frail looking Man carried a cross in the midst of mocking masses.  
Finally, the procession came to some hill where the Man was nailed to the tree and hoisted up into the air to die.
The tree discovered that it was strong enough to stand at the top of the hill and be as close to God as was possible.  
Out of the third tree, sinful men had curved a cross that would give hope to millions of hopeless people facing untold adversities of this life.
At the time things seem to be going off rails and we think God has forgotten all about His people, the moral of this story simply reminds us that God has plans for us (Jer. 29:11).”   
Times of adversity are a call to trust in God more than ever before. Prophet Isaiah says that God “will keep in perfect peace whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.”

Then he adds: “Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal” (Isa. 26:3, 4).  And Joel Osteen encourages those going through adversity to be “bounce back” people.  
He says that bounce back people know that times of adversity are temporary.  
They give opportunity for growth, and for that reason, as Osteen says adversity should sharpen the resolve to conquer.  
And for sure, life’s storms do threaten, but they don’t destroy.

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