It was one of those days when I got to take a deep breath for like, a minute, and then had to keep going very quickly. The past few hours had been filled with confusion, tiredness, sadness and even anger. The day was sucking.
Now, I could have easily taken this in to account and said, “Ok, God, it’s yours.” But I admit I didn’t. Instead I bemoaned everything, how customers approached me at work, how that guy poured the sugar in his coffee, how I wasn’t cleaning fast enough. I huffed and puffed around, sweeping with indignation, doing the dishes with many splashes, knocking the espresso out of the portafilter with just a little too much effort.
But then after several “This sucks” my boyfriend simply asked me, “Well, did you pray about it?” Maybe there was a little nervous cringe on his face because he was really trying to say, “Stop being a baby and whining so much.”
Walking around with my hands on my hips I prayed and God clearly brought it to my attention that I was being extremely selfish.
So, with a dramatic flourish of throwing my hands in to the air I announced to my boyfriend, “God is my only satisfaction right now because everything else is pissing me off.”
He laughed. I rested in this truth. As believers, God is our only source of true fulfillment and happiness. Everything else will piss us off.
Paul and the Corinthians had to throw their hands up in the air often. Paul is constantly encouraging them to take heart though. Yeah, this sucks, but only for right now. They went through trouble after trouble, pain, hardship, even physical suffering. But there was much hope.
God is our only joy. He is our perfect, righteous, loving, gracious creator. He is infallible. Everything else in this world fails. We’re all striving for fulfillment whether it’s through love, attention, or accomplishment. We can search everywhere and anywhere for this but God is the only way to truly attain it.
2 Corinthians starts off with Paul praising God because of the comfort he brings. He’s sharing with the people how he and Timothy were brutalized, to the point that they despaired of life itself (1:8). He says in the next verse, “But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” Paul put his joy in God alone and even the toughest situations of getting beat up weren’t so bad because he had hope. He raised the dead before so we have hope that he will do it once again. Just like the Lord delivered us from the last horrible day at work and we woke up the next morning refreshed.
But it’s not just hope in God giving us great days consistently. There’s so much more to it.
“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 to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
The world is infested with sin, so it sucks. People are corrupted because they’re not focused on God. There is wreckage within everything. These verses go beyond saying God is going to give you happiness all the time. They say instead that sometimes God is going to let your days suck to prepare you for eternity with Him. Paul says that we’re being prepared for an eternal weight of glory. Think about the term eternal weight. It must be so strong, powerful, heavenly and righteous that it pushes down on your spirit because of all the understanding and perfection we’ll encounter. This is where our hope lies. The things in this world are clear. We see right through them. This pisses us off. It’s what we can’t see right now that should be grasped on to so tightly. Since God is the only way to this hope we should grasp on to Him so tightly, with all of our strength. He will always be there while that job you hate, that person who rags on you, the way that cup sets on the table or the way the stranger poured their sugar won’t matter. And when we actually allow God to fill our hearts that anger melts away anyways. All of a sudden we find fulfillment and we end up serving God better. Instead of seeing calamity and brokenness we see opportunity to bring God’s light to the situations.
This is exactly what Paul allowed himself to do. God sent Titus to the Corinthians so he could see just how well they were doing. Paul was shown their zeal for the Lord so even though he’s throwing his hands in the air saying, “Ok, God, I get it. I get it.” He’s also saying, “I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.” (2 Corinthians 7:4). Paul knows that God comforts the downcast (7:6) and he also knows that all this is worth it in the end.
God gives us one path to fulfillment. He doesn’t say choose path a, b or c and maybe you’ll get it right. He says he is the way and the truth and the life. If we want to try to control our lives by our works alone we will fail horribly. Anything that brings temporary happiness will become an idol. When we let transient things rule our lives and expect them to constantly attain perfection we end up overshadowing God. Life starts to suck all over again – we get pissed off. But if we let God rule our lives we find favor, happiness, blessing, love, understanding and the list goes on and on of what He graciously lavishes upon us because He loves us and because all He asks is that we live our lives for Him.
God’s love and grace for us is so vast and abounding that he takes us from unbelievably painful situations and shows us the promise of eternity with Him through the tough times. When we learn to endure, trust in Him completely, dedicate our lives to the only purpose that matters we have an overflowing fountain of hope. Life can be lived beautifully amidst death if we just hand our lives to Him.
So, with that, I throw my hands in the air.
