God's Nearness in our Trials

“You protect me with your saving shield. You support me with your right hand. You have stooped to make me great.” Psalm 18:35

Life is full of adventure, wonder and surprises around nearly every bend. But adventure cannot exist without the possibility of misadventure. Wonder sometimes comes like a box full of question marks asking why when we have cleared a row of hurdles, a hundred more wait ahead. And for some, life has dropped bomb after bomb upon them so that bad news is no surprise at all.

As a pastor, I often wish following Christ meant that the battles were over, financial worries were gone, and unexpected tragedy would never come knocking again. In fact, it almost angers me when some in spiritual authority suggest just that. A dear person decides to follow Christ and is told that their faith will keep every bad thing away. For a while they believe it.

Losing a job once is easy to explain away. “God must have a new, better place for me to work.” A dear friend dies in a car accident. “Their time here was finished, God wanted to take His beautiful daughter home.” One of their grown children mistreats his spouse. “He’ll come around, just like the prodigal son. I just need to believe more, have more faith.”

But, let that job loss, the accident, the rebellion of a child happen over and over in various other disguises and our faith can be shaken. Having believed that, by faith, we could escape the travails and suffering of the world, we now have few options. Most succumb to the myth that they simply have not had enough faith. Greater faith would have equaled fewer tragedies.

Even sadder are the times that someone walks away from “the faith” because of the constant barrage of disaster. For them, the “gospel” had proven itself untrue. They believed with all the belief in them; hung on until their fingers were raw, and now have finally decided that they have believed a lie. And they walk away.

Here is where those who currently are walking with Jesus need great discernment. The person has not walked away from Christ, or the faith. They walked away from a distorted reflection of the real thing. As someone has put it, “Finding Christ does not mean building a house in a land of no storms, but building a house that no storm can destroy.”

That is why this verse, and others like it, are of such comfort when we understand we are not exempt from trials or tragedy. God protects us with His saving shield. What is He protecting? If we walk with our eyes open, we realize that believers have gone through tragedy, so this “protection” must mean something other than “I’m not going to ever suffer.”

Dear one, what if God is protecting something much more precious than your physical life? What if His “shield of protection” is meant to keep the inner you safe when life pounds like a threatening storm? What if He is more concerned with getting us through the storm intact than taking away the trouble?

The next two phrases are beautifully intimate. “You support me with you right hand. You have stooped down to make me great.” When we do have to go through trials, we are promised something more lovely than a mechanical view of faith that measures our level of belief and subtracts the corresponding level of suffering. “Faith” is not some magical power we get to use like a “get out of jail free” card just because we rolled the right number on the dice.

Instead, when we do face trials, we have the promise of God Himself supporting us. David describes it as “God’s right hand”. Instead of a general notion of God’s help, we are made to understand His very presence in the midst of each trial.

And “stooping” to make us great, what more exquisite expression is there of God’s tenderness toward His own? God, who even must bend down to touch the clouds, comes low, enters in to our weakness, meets us in our darkness, face to face, and “make us great”! Those who have learned the gentle touch of Christ in the midst of travail are able to share the same encouragement with others experiencing the same trouble.

Don’t succumb to the craziness that suggests that having the right balance in your faith account exempts you from suffering. Instead, even the smallest, child-like faith catches God’s eye. The weakest cry for help from God’s beloved is answered by His nearness in the storm. Let His gentleness make you great the next time trouble wants to stay longer than expected.