he came to his senses…

with the help of a famine.

Luke 15. The lost younger son hit rock bottom. It was no doubt humbling. His recklessness had brought him to ruin. You would think that would be enough for him to be sensing what Heidegger called ” unheimlichkeite” – that eery and anxious sense of not being at home and longing for his father. Yet just in case that were not enough, the Lord allowed a famine in that distant country of self exile.

The Lord’s providence mercifully led him to repentance. But it wasn’t what we often expect God to provide for us. when was the last tyime you heard someone say thankyou God for my unemployment. Thankyou God for my cancer. Thankyou God for my chronic backpain. Thankyou Lord for doing what was necessary to humble me. It unsettles us to let God be God.

The lost young son’s  suffering was not wasted, for it would seem that he received it as discipline. It brought a sober mind set that could savour the goodness of his father, and set him on a course home. His idols had delivered him exactly what they could – nothing – and he had finally realized what he’d had all along – a gracious father.

I like what CS Lewis says regarding this kind of suffering,  it is God’s megaphone to a hurting world.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world”.

I wish more people would ‘hear’ that megaphone  and often wonder why there is not more people “coming to their senses”.

…and for my friends who are yet to be convinced and who are suffering, despite what some brands of Christianity might tell you, Christianity is not a coke machine that exchanges a few coins of religion for a can of blessing. They put nails in his hands.

God has not promised to deliver you from suffering, but he has promised to delver you through it.  He lifts up the humble … eventually.