My wife was really terrified by the situation as she's never experienced a couple in such a heated argument. It brought her to tears to hear them. For me, it was an old memory. I used to go to bed when I was little and awaken in the middle of the night to hear my parents argue just as this poor couple; not on occasion, but on a consistent basis. What kept me from calling the police last night was remembering as a young boy how I wished that the police would never come and break up an argument my parents were having. The shame would be more than I could bare.
Last night, almost felt like when I was little. I would lie there and cringe with every raised voice, wondering why this was happening and hoping for it to stop. For my wife, she was very disturbed. For me, it was something that I had already witnessed and wasn't that shocked.
But at the same time, as I listened to this poor couple fight, I know that it was God and God alone who brought my parents from a life of verbal abuse towards each other to a restored marriage of love and trust.
I had a conversation with an atheist yesterday who said ( and I paraphrase) that healing is only a result of positive feelings that people have; prayer is just a placebo. Healed marriages and recovering alcoholics are just a result from people having a positive attitude and willing to help themselves.
While that sounds rational to a rational person, I just shake my head. My parents tried everything else in the world to overcome their problems and it wasn't until they submitted to Jesus that their marriage began to heal. How is it that two people who were in such disharmony, are now united in peace, serving the Lord? I have witnessed first hand the power of God and nobody can belittle it or take that from me. The world suggested a divorce, but God brought something better; a healed marriage. It wasn't counselors or books or tapes that saved them. It was God.
On another note, someone might wonder why God is allowing the little boy to suffer so much and see his parents fight. I would say that the parents, whether they admit it or not, know they are hurting their child with their fighting. It is not until someone suffers that people see how much their sin hurts.
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If only we could skip all the yelling, beating, bruising, and heart ache of painful experiences. I wish I didn't have them too. The fact is that pain causes growth, cells grow after injury, relationships grow throuh ecperiences, and people grow and mature through pain.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean pain necessary for growth to occur? I wish it wasn't, but every great change comes about through necessity. The fact is that most people are drawn into a real dynamic relationship with Jesus only through some sort of necessity. It sounds like foolishness that people would be healed through "experiences with God", but maybe God designed it this way. Maybe necessity drives change, and perhaps pain is the driving force to cause us to want to make the biggest change we could ever make. I can't imagine any more dramatic a change than giving your life over to someone, or to some ideology, or to some "god". Maybe its only in that submission to the real God, the one who fulfills our spiritual needs, that we understand who God is and why we need Him so much (1 Cor 1:18). Ultimately, I'm not too worried about the boy, I just pray that God will continue to do what He has always done, save people from themselves and bring them into a marvelous light. I hope one day the boy upstairs will be able to share to others how his life changed when God saved him from his pain.
From Elliot:
ReplyDeleteHere are Elliot's thoughts:
The God who created existance as we know it has the power to make life free of suffering, there was a point when this was how life was in Eden. But because we were made in his image, with free will and mental faculties similar to his own, we would need a constant reminder of his existance lest we rely solely on our own abilities. Let there be no mistake, you can live a life on this planet without a relationship with God, but you will suffer, and you will never understand why. But if we do know the Lord, if do trust in His grace and love for us, then we can begin to see that any and every bit of suffering which we endure has one purpose: It reminds us how much we truely need our Father and how, with God as our captain, our guide, our master, we can live a life of consiquence. A life which affects those around us; a life which changes the world in small, but profound ways. The light of the Lord shines through his children, sometimes it is very subtle, but it still shines and over time it can illuminate even the darkest places in the coldest, hardest hearts of mankind.