The burdens of the faith are many and weighty. Why should that surprise us? Our Lord is quite clear when He describes true blessedness to us in the beatitudes: 'Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you' (Mt 5:11-12). Persecution and suffering await those who faithfully confess the truth of Christ; His suffering and death for the sins of the world. If they have so treated our teacher, why should we, His students, expect anything different? We, who are His servants, should not expect better treatment than our Master.

 

How do we deal with this? Recently, I was struck by the content of Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2:1-10 . This woman has just dropped her only child, a toddler, in the care of the High Priest, Eli, in the house of the Lord. She walking away from her child and fulfilling her vow to the Lord that the child would be his (1Sa 1:11), if He gave her the gift of a child. We would expect the prayer to be filled with self-centered lamentations on the loss of her only son; pouring out her broken heart to the Lord in desperate weeping and sorrow at her misfortune. Nothing of the kind is even hinted at in her beautiful prayer. She exults in the Lord and praises His kindness. She thanks Him for lifting her from the ash heap and for giving her a great inheritance. No "woe is me" is on the lips of this woman. She has caught what Paul talked about centuries later in Romans that all that had happened God had intended for her good. She could look beyond her sorrow and suffering in her loss and regard God as good and committed to her and her salvation. Oh, that we had the faith of dear Hannah!

 

Our world needs desperately to know what suffering means, but it has not the tools to understand it, because it does not know the God who suffers for us. The world only knows how to howl against God for permitting evil. We must see all our suffering in and through the death of Christ. Here is the God who does not permit evil, He suffers it! The cross is the proper viewpoint from which to tell us what our suffering means. When Christ looks beyond His suffering that He might pronounce us among the blessed sinners who will be with Him in His Paradise, like the criminal on the cross, then we will know what it is to say what we think is a curse from God is indeed good and right. Exactly when we feel God is our enemy is when He is being our friend. We look beyond our feeling and confess faithfully with Hannah, Paul, and Jesus: 'The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts' (1Sa 2:6-7). All of this He does in the same life, and at the same time; killing and making alive and causing to fall and raising up. Blessed is Your name, O Lord. Only faith can say this. Only faith can take up its cross. Only faith can follow Christ to Calvary. Only faith can look upon the enmity of the Father against the Son, so that it can know, confess, and exult in like suffering. Only faith can know, confess and exult in the rescue unto new life that the God who gives meaning to suffering will give.  

 

'And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose' (Rm 8:28). Here Paul seems to me to have mooted this whole topic for those who were in danger; or, rather, not this only, but also what was said a little before. For the words, 'The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us' (Rm 8:18); and those, that 'the whole creation has been groaning' (Rm 8:22); and 'in this hope we were saved' (Rm 8:24); and the phrase, 'we wait for it with patience' (Rm 8:25); and that, 'we do not know what to pray for as we ought' (Rm 8:26), are all said to them. For he instructs them not to choose just what they themselves may think to be useful, but what the Spirit may suggest. For many things that seem to be profitable, but sometimes cause much harm. To live in quiet, for instance, and freedom from dangers, and living without fear, seemed to be advantageous for his readers. Why should we be amazed if they seemed advantageous to them, since to Paul himself this seemed to be so? He came afterwards to know that the opposite to all these are advantageous things, and when he came to know it, he was content. So Paul, who sought the Lord three times to be freed from trials, when he heard Him say 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness' (2Co 12:9), afterwards rejoiced at being persecuted, insulted, and having irreparable evils done to him. He says, 'For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities' (2Co 12:10). And this was his reason for saying, 'We do not know what to pray for as we ought' (Rm 8:26). He exhorted everyone to give these matters to the Spirit. For the Holy Spirit is very mindful of us, and this is the will of God.

 

Having then cheered them by all methods, Paul proceeds by putting forward a reason strong enough to reclaim them. He says, 'We know that for those who love God all things work together for good.' (Rm 8:28). Now when he speaks of "all things," he mentions even the things that seem painful. For should even tribulation, or poverty, or imprisonment, or famine, or deaths, or anything else come upon us, God is able to change all these things into the opposite. For this is an instance of His unspeakable power. He can make things seemingly painful to be lighter to us and turn them into that which is helpful to us. He does not say, that 'those who love God,' will experience no grief, but, that it 'works together for good.' He uses the grievous things themselves to make the persons so plotted against approved. And this is a much greater thing than hindering the approach of such grievances, or stopping them when they have come. God did this even with the furnace at Babylon. For He did not either prevent Daniel and his companions from falling into it. He did not extinguish the flame after those saints were thrown into it, but let it burn on, and made them by this very flame greater objects of wonder (Dan 3:20-27). With the Apostles, too, He continually worked similar wonders.

 

Things seemingly harmful do good to such persons and profitable things harm those who do not love Him. For instance, the exhibition of miracles and wisdom in His teaching only injured the Jews, as did the correct teaching; and for the former they called Him possessed (Jn 8:48), for the other they said He made Himself equal to God (Jn 5:18). Because of the miracles (Jn 11:47, 53), they even decided to kill Him. But the thief when crucified, when nailed to the Cross, and reviled, and suffering ills unnumbered, not only was not hurt, but even gained the greatest good from it. See how for those who love God all things work together for good.  

John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans , 15.1