In his book, Where is God When It Hurt?, Philip Yancy tells the story of a conversation he had one time with Robin Graham. Graham is the youngest person in history to ever sail all the way around the world alone. Graham decided to try this incredible feat when he was only 16. Little did he know all he was getting into. In the three years that his voyage took, he was smashed broadside by ocean storms; one time his mast was snapped in two by a wave; another time he was almost totally destroyed by a waterspout. His worst experience, he said, was near the equator, in the doldrums, that windless, current-less part of the ocean. He became so discouraged that he completely gave up. He covered his boat with kerosene and set it on fire right out in the middle of the ocean. He quickly changed his mind, jumped back on board, and had to put out the fire with his bare hands. After three years, Robin Graham sailed into a Los Angeles harbor as the youngest person to ever sail around the world alone. He was greeted by boats and banners, crowds and news reporters. Cars honked and steam boats blasted their whistles as he came sailing through the channel. The joy, the ecstasy of that moment was unlike any he had ever known. No return from another sailing trip had been as glorious. But no other sailing trip had been so agonizing. The investment and the pain and the agony of this round-the-world trip were essential ingredients in the ecstasy of this dramatic homecoming. One of the great truths of Scripture that I have come to appreciate anew through my work on this series is that deep joy, real fulfillment, true maturity, almost by definition, involve pain, investment, disappointment, even agony, along the way. Paul says in Romans 5 that
“suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
And James 1:2-4 (that we have looked at more than once in this series) says that the trials and agony of life are the indispensable building blocks of human character, the essential road to be traveled if we are to be (in the words of James) “mature and complete.” In the scripture we read today, Jesus talks about this in terms of child-bearing. He says,
“A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come.”
You mothers know this.
“. . . but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.”
I’ve managed to see many mothers of new-born babies in the hospital. And when I have gone in and asked how they are doing, no mother has ever replied,
“What a bummer this is. You know how painful it is to have a baby!”
No, as Jesus says,
“she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.”
Her anguish and her waiting actually heighten and intensify her joy when that baby is born. Now, Jesus is using this metaphor in John to describe heaven, and how our suffering in this life will be transformed into joy when we see Christ again. And we’ll talk about that transformation in a little while. But the principle, the transformation of our agony into joy, also applies to life already here and now. Many of you are parents of college students. Many of you have been college students yourselves or are college students now. You know how you have to work your way through all kinds of obstacles before you finally get your degree. You go through the sophomore slumps where you just want to quit and get a job. You change majors. You drop courses. You take the wrong courses and they won’t give you your money back. You lose your girl friend (and the $100 you spent on a Christmas present for her the week before). The obstacles are many. But on that hot day in May when you finally stand in line to go up on the platform and get your diploma, even though it’s not “cool” to be sentimental, your stomach leaps inside and cries, for you have finally made it. But at that moment, the challenges and setbacks of four years (or five or six) are indispensable parts of our joy. Our richest experiences are born of agonizing investments. And there really are no shortcuts to that kind of fulfillment and joy, no easy, painless way. During our freshman year in college, my wife Jeannette and I used to quite often go to her home in Chicago for the weekend. Friday night was great. Saturday was great. Sunday morning was great. Sunday dinner was great. But then we would sit down after dinner to watch the Chicago Bears football team get crushed by someone, and it would begin to sink in: We have to go back soon, away from that warm home, where love and joy permeated everything, to a dormitory that just wasn’t quite home. It was tough. Those were often long, quiet rides back to Grand Rapids where we went to college. It’s painful to grow up. And Jeannette’s dad had a saying that he would lay on us when he sensed we were discouraged. “Nothing worthwhile in life comes easy.” That is a deceptively simple saying. At the time I didn’t think much about it. But I think there’s something profound in that saying. “Nothing worthwhile in life comes easy.” No, it’s not true that our pain and agony are all and always bad. It can be an essential ingredient of our deepest joy and our most lasting fulfillment. Philip Yancy compares life to a symphony. It’s not just the bright, high notes that make a symphony beautiful. It’s the dissonant chords, the deep, dark notes, and the long tiring passages that seem to have little movement that suddenly combine with everything else to make the total symphony beautiful. Our lives are like a symphony. Our pain and suffering are the early movement of a slow song, which God in his wisdom is weaving together into a beautiful symphony. And it really is true (to go back to the words of Jesus again) that the mother
“forgets her anguish for her joy that a child is born into the world.”
I realize it’s a little dangerous, pastorally, to talk about forgetting our pain. I know that sometimes painful things happen to us at vulnerable stages of our life (like child abuse) where healing, not forgetting, is the appropriate term. Forgetting is never easy. And sometimes it’s not possible. But it is amazing to see how much people hurt and then how they can be happy and whole and, as it were, forget the pain. Years ago, my wife Jeannette and I had a crisis with one of our children. As parents we were heart-broken. It just happened to be that Jeannette’s parents were in town the weekend that we had to go and stand with our child before a judge. Afterward Jeannette and I went out to lunch with Jeannette’s folks. We talked about what we had been through. At one point I said, “Well, you know what we’re going through. You went through so much with Rudy.” Jeannette’s mom soaked pillows at night with her tears for Jeannette’s brother Rudy. But it was mom who said, that day in the restaurant, “No, I really don’t remember.” That did more for my broken heart than anything anyone could have said. Oh, when we reminded her of the time Rudy and his friends blew up about 20 mailboxes with fireworks, and mom and dad had to drive to Wisconsin to get him out of jail, she remembered. But the pain, she had forgotten, in large measure, to go back to Jesus’ words, because of her joy at what her son is now. It has smothered out the pain. Yes, she forgets her anguish for her joy that a child is born into the world. This movement from agony to ecstasy, from pain to joy, and the interrelationship between the two, is a reality here on earth, within this life. But that is only a faint shadow of another movement from agony to ecstasy that one day we who are in Christ Jesus will experience, the movement from this life to the next. That actually is the specific reference of Jesus in John 16 verse 22:
“So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.”
Our whole life here and our death are the birth pangs before we are born into the ecstasy of heaven, where there will be no pain, no hurt, no loneliness, no fear, no failure, no guilt, no hatred, no regrets. It’s important that we understand that our pain is temporary, not to minimize our pain, but to put fences around it. God pleads with us who ask, in our suffering,
“Where is God when it hurts?”
He pleads,
“Let history finish! Let the symphony scratch out its last mournful notes of discord before it bursts into song!”
Believe. Hope against hope, every day of your life, knowing that one day the victory of our God will be complete, and our pain, instead of being a problem, will be no more than a flickering memory. It’s possible, of course, to think about heaven too much in the Christian life. To make the entire focus of our faith and religion on what is to come. To only care about getting people on the path to heaven and not think enough about life now, the kingdom now, how Christ’s rule changes things and affects things now. But it’s also possible to think about heaven too little. To become so focused upon this earth, this world, thinking we can fix and resolve all things now, that we lose sight of the hope and joy of heaven. The poor, the pain-ridden, the oppressed often live with a more keen awareness of heaven because they know, they know that not so much is going to change in this life. Oh, we can work at bringing God’s shalom, his peace, to earth. We must. And we will. But what keeps the poor, the pain-ridden, the oppressed going is knowing that one day, all things will be set right, the banquet table will be set, violence and injustice and pain will be no more, every valley will be lifted up and every mountain and hill be brought low, and the rough places a plain. One of the problems of affluence, and living in a culture bent on avoiding all pain and increasing pleasure, and being quite successful at it, is that our thirst for heaven diminishes. Heaven doesn’t factor that much into how we deal with our pain now. “We can’t wait until heaven. We need relief now!” But that’s astonishing by any historical or global standard. At any other time in history, and in most places around the world today, heaven isn’t an afterthought, it is a vital, day to day source of comfort and hope and joy, and a centerpiece of a Christian perspective on pain and suffering. A lot of pain and loss and injustice and disability in this world just never goes away. But Paul’s response to that reality in Romans 8 is not to deny life’s pain, or anesthetize ourselves from life’s pain, or try to prematurely fix life’s pain, but to reframe it. Paul says in verse 18,
18I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
And does this lead Paul to despair? No, this is the chapter where Paul goes on to say,
28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. If God is for us, who can be against us? 33Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen< 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Christians wait, but they wait patiently. They wait victoriously. We are more than conquerors, already now, because of Christ in us, the hope of glory. God’s word tells us today that the mother forgets her anguish at the sight of her new child. I close this message (and this series) with the words of our master:
“So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice.”
Dear Lord, thank you for a hope and vision of life that transcends all human pain and suffering. Thank you that one day our anguish and the anguish of the whole world will be smothered with joy.
Duane Kelderman
Rev. Duane Kelderman is the Vice President for Administration and an Associate Professor of Preaching at Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids. Before his current position he served as pastor in Christian Reformed congregations in Toledo, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; and Grand Rapids, Michigan. Rev. Kelderman is married to Jeannette and has three children and two grandchildren. He was born and raised in Oskaloosa, Iowa and attended Calvin College and Calvin Seminary. He enjoys reading and carpentry.
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