Jeremiah was a prophet, one of the highest callings among God’s covenant people. He was tasked with delivering the words of the Lord to his people, and he did. He was obedient the first time, he spoke God’s message, and delivered some of the greatest and most monumental prophecies in all of scripture.
Shortly after, he cursed the day he was born, saying that it would have been better if he had died in his mother’s womb.
Elijah, another prophet, was perhaps one of the greatest workers of miracles in biblical history. God used him to bring judgement down on wicked kings, to shatter idols, and to deliver the kind of radical change and societal reform that most of us can only dream of. He witnessed God’s might and majesty in ways that probably none of us ever will in this life.
After his greatest triumph, he ran away in fear and shame, and begged God to let him die.
Hannah served God with all her heart, and was loved lavishly by her husband. She lived in prosperous and peaceful times. She was respected in her community, had the favor of God, and the love of a good man, yet her one grief overshadowed all her blessings.
She wept and prayed with such bitterness and insensible grief that Eli the priest thought she was drunk.
The cry of all these hearts is a universal one. “Why does my life have to be this way?” Scripture rarely answers every “why” that we ask. Instead, it shows us what God is doing and where he is leading us. Yet we all have felt that question forced out of us, whether through a brief flash of pain, or while enduring long seasons of relentless afflictions, the kind that feel dominating, life-defining, and eternal.
But no matter our experience, we know and can affirm that others have felt the same – these voices in scripture and more. And as we wrestle with the same questions and fears that they lifted up, we may well ask why we have these accounts written down, preserved as God’s eternal word for us. There are many reasons, but I want to point us to three.
- They are written for our comfort.
- They are written to show God’s glory.
- They are written to record how we might be transformed by the power of the gospel.
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
2nd Corinthians 4:16-18
1. Our comfort.
Do you ever feel alone in your hard feelings? Scripture is here to tell you that you are never alone – whether in despair, depression, anxiety, neediness, or bitter longing. You are a part of God’s story, just as those who came before you, and you are not alone. Others have felt these things before you; your feelings and cries for help are not shameful.
But better than just company, you get a destination. You get to see where each of their stories took them in the end. Jeremiah is vindicated; Elijah ascended; Hannah had the child of her prayers. While the weight of your present story may suffocate you now, where could it take you next? You only have to look at what God has done for others, and know that he will be just as faithful to you as he was to them. And in the end, you know that Christ has walked with you then, and now, and always, and he is no stranger to affliction.
Whether in this life or in heaven, your story is building towards a magnificent crescendo – an eternal weight of glory that will make all these light momentary afflictions seem like nothing at all.
2. God’s glory.
Do you long for meaning in your story? Do you ever feel like everything you do is pointlessly hard? Scripture demonstrates that every act of obedience, while they may not make sense right now, are nothing less than a successive layering of bricks in the radiant temple of God’s glorious dwelling. What feels meaningless means everything.
You contribute to God’s glory – not adding to it, but participating in it. Your life, for all that it might feel petty and mean, reverberates in an unseen world beyond all your reckoning. Everything matters; nothing goes unseen. What you perceive as worthless, God counts as glorious. Your treasure may be carried in jars of clay, but the surpassing power of your story belongs to God, not you. Your weakness is his strength.
So you may not understand the chaos of your life now – just like the reverse side of a cross-stitch embroidery reveals nothing but tangled skeins of thread – but one day it will flip, and you will see all your life with eyes that burn with the eternal, and all that seemed like chaos will be made known for what it always was: the glory of God, shining through your life, radiant and unfettered.
3. Transformation.
Do you feel crushed beneath an impossible weight? Have you seen your hopes wither and fade? Scripture promises two things: You will not lose heart. You will be transformed.
You are two selves. There is your outer self, which is being crushed and broken, which is wounded and frail, which feels the weight of the world and breathes the poisons of evil every day. And there is your inner self, which is being renewed day by day, transformed from glory to glory as you behold the glory of God. Your old self must be crucified daily. Yes, crucifixion is ugly, brutal, horrific, and painful. It will hurt. You will have to give some things up. But you are not better than Christ; nor are you better than his cross. Take it up with him and follow him into death. His death is the kind that brings life.
And because of this paradoxical death-life, you can bear the weights and griefs of this world, you can suffer the slings and arrows of hurt, and you can keep from losing heart. Because every tear now will be laughter later, every wound now will be a future treasure. There is nothing in this present age, not one moment of suffering, that you will not see transformed through Christ into comfort and glory and eternal life – if only you will put your trust in Him, and surrender your life to his Lordship.
There are still tears. Pain is still real. Sorrow still hurts just as much. Jeremiah still wept; Elijah still broke down; Hannah still pleaded. None of them saw their stories in full. They all saw with veiled faces, and despaired.
But we have Christ. And in him, the veil is removed. Christian, you know where your story ends! Your story ends in renewal, in transformation, in laughter, in joy, in a bright glory that will outshine the sun, in a warm embrace that will never let go. Your story ends before the throne of God, and it ends in worship, and it is an ending that will never end, but will continue for all of eternity.
So you may still ask that question, “Why does my life have to be this way?” But you have the answer.
Your life in all its afflictions is preparing you for an eternal weight of glory. Your real life is unseen, invisible; yet one day it will spring into reality, more real than anything you’ve ever seen, heard, touched, tasted, or felt. And on that day, your broken, battered self will be revealed to be something different, something new, something you never thought it could be.
You will be transformed.
You will be renewed.
You will be glorious.
And you will have Christ.
So don’t lose heart. This gentle road of afflictions is just how you get there.