With God There Is No Suffering

Today’s reading: Jeremiah 30:1-10

When I celebrate Lent properly, it is a time of outward agony but inward peace. And “celebrate” is definitely the right word.

Today’s reading is a terrific reminder that this concept applies to all “suffering” — not just to the story of Jesus’s trials, though that is certainly the focus of Lent.  (I place quotations around suffering above because, well, that’s the word that man understands best. God’s word, clearly, is Glory, but I risk being dismissed as a nut if I typed that instead in this context.)

With God, there simply is no suffering. Time after time, we see in the Bible that harsh times lead to glorious victories.  Israel’s return from exile in Babylon is but one example. (Genesis starts us off with the entire life of Joseph, which is an endless string of “tragedies,” and as I think of it, Joseph’s story is not even the first such tale of suffering-turned-to-glory in that book.)

So beginning with the ashes that my pastor will be placing on my forehead in just a few minutes, I will spend the coming weeks in a state of apparent suffering as I reflect upon the great evil that was perpetuated upon Jesus during his time in Jerusalem. But, inwardly, I will be celebrating — with our always victorious God.

Thanks be to God for His eternal presence as Good.