Beyond Pain

Hey, back again already. Yep, it’s some sort of a record.

We have new neighbors. Out of our kitchen window we have a ring-side seat to a nest of crows. There are four chicks, if you can still call them chicks; they’re adolescents in crow-years already, judging by their size.

It was a while back that I saw a murder (that’s what a crow ‘flock’ is called, in case you didn’t know) of crows out of our bedroom window. There were so many crows that they literally blocked the sky. It was a black, undulating cloud.

As I watched them I began to wonder about the character of crows and about the account of Elijah. Remember? God used crows to bring him food as he hid in the desert. But are crows really generous? Would they, by nature, be inclined to bring to food to something other than their big-mouthed, red-mouthed, babies?
The answer is in the nest, I think. It’s made of everything they could find. Most prominent are the electrical wires and strips of metal that they couldn’t quite weave into the nest and so hang down and swing in the wind: feathered dumpster divers, that’s what these birds are.
Now, what I’ve done is to substitute ‘circumstance’ for ‘crow’ in the account of Elijah. What this then tells me is that God can use the circumstances of this world- circumstances that, by nature, have no inclination to work for me- God can use those very circumstances to provide for me.

It would be a massively disappointing application of this truth to say that this means mainly material provision. In fact hardly any of us are in material need, but what about the need for encouragement, love, patience? How about all of those other non-material needs? Those are the things that get me, that cause pain day in and out.
And so, out of all of this I have to conclude that while God can use circumstances to provide for me, he doesn’t always…Why…?

Well…I don’t know…But in this I AM confident: The circumstance that he could use to make my life easier, but doesn't, is itself a circumstance he’s using to make me better in all the other circumstances in which I find myself.

In this I find freedom from pain: His promise to complete the work he’s started in me includes his promise to use whatever difficulty I face for an eternally valuable result.
Oh, by the way, crows don’t carry food in their beaks, or talons; they’re regurgitators- trust me, I’ve been observing.
Poor Elijah? No, and in the eternal picture not ‘Poor Me’ either.