2008-04-25 Fri 5:15a Guatemala City

Week 35 — FRIDAY

“For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict which you saw and now hear to be mine” (Phil. 1:29-30). One would have thought this passage would read: “For it has been laid on you as an obligatory duty not only to believe in Him but also to suffer for His sake.” Instead the word “granted” is used, implying that it was a privilege, an honor, to suffer for His sake. Instead of whining, complaining, and asking: “Why should this happen to me?” we are told to look on suffering for Christ as our highest privilege and honor. It is!

When Moses and Elijah talked with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration the account says they “appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). He was “to accomplish” His departure, His death at Jerusalem. Usually death is looked on as an acquiescence, submission to the inevitable. Here it was an accomplishment! Jesus accomplished more in the few hours on the cross than He did in all the rest of His lifetime. He opened His heart to the world’s sin and sorrow and allowed it all to be forced through the channel—the single channel of His own broken heart. That broken heart was the healing of the world. It was “granted” to Him to suffer, and that granted suffering became His chief glory.

Whether the suffering be a pinprick or a stab, it is granted to us to take it and do what Jesus did with His departure—“accomplish” something through it. An invalid, blind and paralyzed for years, organized “Courage, Inc.,” with 250 members. When asked about his conclusions he said, “I wouldn’t trade all the insights I have gained through my years of suffering, for my health back again.” He accepted his suffering as granted by God to accomplish “Courage, Inc.”

O God our Father, when life gives me a pinprick or a stab, give me the insight to see in this an opportunity to be grateful for Your grant. If we handle them together we can make them both into accomplishments. Amen.

AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Everything that happens—good, bad, or indifferent—is an opportunity for accomplishment.