157 Advent and Adversity

Meaning: “conveying a significance that is not directly expressed . . .”

In this third week of Advent, Gentle Reader, it is well to consider the issues inherent in adversity (mixed adventure) that can make the desired result—a sublime adventure with God in Christ Jesus—difficult or even impossible to achieve.

And indeed, adverse conditions define bad times, even when the believer or trusting adventurer is totally reliant on God, Gentle Reader. Consider the adversity encountered by Mary and Joseph, preceding and following the birth of their baby. It was a difficult time. Consider the adversity that we encounter in our day-to-day lives.

But first let’s back up a minute. As we have seen, the person who delights in the Lord in good times is blessed indeed because the relationship is all good times. I spend a lot of time doing that—delighting in the Lord—and enjoy many blessings by way of that relationship. But that same person (me) running to the Lord in hard times (from which I am not exempt)—in crisis, trial, struggle, disappointment, sorrow, distress, fear, sickness, need, and so on— is, like Mary and Joseph, well familiar with an assortment of issues involved in such troublesome times. In fact, believers (including Mary and Joseph), from my experience, often encounter many if not all of the following and more in times of adversity.

Believers can find that relationship with God does not guarantee a quick fix. Troubles can seem to drag on. It was a hard time for Mary and Joseph to have to travel by donkey and when Mary was pregnant, no less. And the trip took weeks.

Believers can also find that a large amount of suffering and submission is integral to their experience before what they term “good times” ever return. Mary and Joseph’s trip and stay in Bethlehem was perilous for parent and child. Many modern-day believers find the current world economic dilemma into which we have recently entered a real and permanent reversal of fortune, not to mention a frightening difficulty.

Believers can also find that patience and endurance, of their own, can become a real trial, testing the adventurer’s conviction that reliance upon God is her/his best hope. Mary and Joseph pressed on patiently in their journey to Bethlehem only to find there was nowhere to stay except in a stable, full of animals. What dismay must have threatened their peace of mind! Modern-day believers suffering a chronic illness may face a lifetime of daunting trials.

Overall, the believer must almost always face that God has hard work in store for the adventurer before resolution of bad times will come. For Mary and Joseph, King Herod was a constant specter of menace while they were in Bethlehem. And ultimately, at God’s prompting, they had to flee the land of his rule. Today, Americans as well as most of the rest of the civilized world, must deal with the threat of terrorism—a vague term, deliberately made vague to try to dilute its identity, yet leaving the world with no consensus on its profile.

Perhaps it is character-building or service that must precede relief or improvement for the believer, even for Mary and Joseph. Or just a plain hard lot of practice and reshaping of thinking is required, to conform a person to God’s will and ways, and good times do not return for quite a while or in the same condition as before.

Or sometimes, good times never return until the faithful believer moves through death and goes home. As I said, mixed adventures can be tough going, with or without God. It’s just that without God they can be and frequently are impossible, defeating challenges. With God, there is hope—hope based on the truth of God’s character, guarantees, power and faithfulness.

Yet, even if adventure in company with God is not all enjoyable, even if it is the toughest going, I have discovered two memorable things: One, as C.S. Lewis says, if I “take the adventure God sends,” then two, as Scripture says “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28, NKJV).”

“All things” include “bad times,” Gentle Reader. Times filled with even the harshest of adventures of the mixed kind that can try our persistence and faith. Jesus’ trialsome experience on our behalf reveals this truth. But that He endured means victory for Him and us. When we endure with Him, His victory is ours! And gloriously, for steadfast believers, good is guaranteed to come out of our adversity, as it did for Mary, Joseph and Jesus; and to my way of thinking, there’s no better guarantee than that to remember this Advent and always.

My choice.

To be continued . . .