Trouble

For thus says the Lord: We have heard a voice trembling, of fear, and not of peace.  Ask now, and see, Wether a man is ever in labor with child?  So why do I see every man with his hands on his loins like a woman in labor, and all faces turned pale?  Alas!  For that day is great, so that none is like it; and it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.

My particular denomination has a history of seeing this passage (Jeremiah 30:5-7) and some others as pointing to a time of great troubles just before the second coming of Christ.  I will not delve into that here, since I and my eleven (or is it twelve?) readers have a diverse group of beliefs and disbeliefs on second coming doctrines or lack thereof.  However, I’m bringing this up, because I heard a helpful sermon this weekend which opened with this passage and is, I think, applicable to all sorts of troublesome life circumstances.

The Jeremiah passage really caught my attention, since I had been in labor myself just five months and a few days ago...  

The point of the sermon was that we, as limited folks, focus on the trouble.  But God’s focus is on his deliverance: “but he shall be saved out of it.”  

So here’s the labor analogy which developed in my mind:

When I was pregnant, I was eager for the pregnancy to be over and to have that child in my arms where I could really get to know him or her and enjoy being together.  I knew there was going to be labor in between the pregnancy and the holding the baby part.  And I endeavored to learn some things about it and prepare for it.  There’s only so much you can do to learn and prepare, because each woman’s labor is different.  You can learn some strategies for coping.  I did.  And I only used a couple of them, but I’m still glad I prepared.  Also, there was no way to understand the intensity and pain of labor before it happened.  I have experienced some intensity and some pain before, but I have to say that pushing a human out of ones body has absolutely NO analogue in my previous experience.  And for an hour or two afterward I was wondering why on earth people would do this a second time.  But once you have that child in your arms for a bit, you pretty much forget about labor and do not regret a moment of the agony.

So in any type of trouble, whether you’re imagining “the time of Jacob’s trouble” before the Lord’s return or are experiencing a more temporal type of trouble, our focus can most appropriately be on the Lord’s deliverance.  We need not focus on the badness of the circumstance, but on what God is doing.  Perhaps he is going to deliver us from bad habits or sin, perhaps he is going to bring us into circumstances better suited for our lives, or perhaps he is going to even physically deliver us from a dangerous situation.  And, worst case scenario, if our own time of trouble leads to our death, God can use that transition to deliver us into his eternal kingdom, which, surely would be an improvement.

This must be what James meant when he said “Whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy....”

The key ingredient though, is faith.  That’s the preparation part.  We have no idea what trouble may befall us and when, but we can prepare by learning to trust God moment by moment in little things.  We can enjoy talking with him as we walk through our days.  We can drink in words about his beauty.  If we don’t trust God, we can’t possibly see past the trouble.  We can’t hope for the deliverance he wants to bring us.  Our part is to grasp ahold of God and his beautiful character and not let go.  Let nothing separate us from him.  Then we can fully enjoy his deliverance no matter our circumstances.