When mice got into our home through the wall adjoining our neighbor to the south, but bedbugs did not come through the wall adjoining our neighbor to the north, my gratitude mantra was, “Merciful mice: bigger critters, smaller problems.” There was, however, still the leaking roof, which could not be repaired until warmer weather. The Caliph’s House tells of a family who bought a dilapidated mansion in Casablanca. The architect hired to oversee the renovations took the money and ran. The demolition crew removed walls, stairs, and windows, then built fires in the house so they could cook their couscous. Because the crew tore out windows, the rain poured into the one usable room of the house where the family slept. Ducks paddled in the bedroom lake. Every woe they experienced reminded me to be grateful even though mice scampered under my leaking roof.
One of my strategies, when tempted to discouragement, is to compare what I deserve with what I’ve been given by our gracious God. The prophet Isaiah has been my gratitude guide. We deserve to stagger, branded and scarred, in a sackcloth skirt (Isaiah 3:24). We should strap on our armor so we can be shattered (8:9). We should be swept with a broom of destruction (14:23); instead, our house is swept clean and filled with the Holy Spirit. We should be threshed and winnowed (21:10), a tumult and a trampling (22:5); instead, we who dwell in the dust awake and sing for joy (26:19). We should be tossed like a ball into a wide land (22:18), slung out as from the hollow of a sling (1 Samuel 25:29), but we are kept under the shadow of his wing. We should be consumed in smoke that leaves no stragglers (14:31), but we are bound in the bundle of the living (1 Samuel 25:29). We should be drowned in the outpouring of God’s wrath, but we get honey from the rock (Psalm 81:16).
I was reminded of what a sin-trampled world this is when I got lost in Belize and came upon this warning.
My problem indeed!
This is also a God-ordered and God-ordained world. The Lord smites, but it is for the healing of the nations. He has chosen us in the furnace of affliction (48:10), with an emphasis on the eternal “he has chosen us,” not the temporal “furnace of affliction.” The Lord gives us the bread of adversity (30:20), but the bread of Communion sustains. The walls in my kitchen and bath may not yet be rebuilt, but my soul has salvation as its walls (26:1).
This sin-marred yet God-bathed world will be aboundingly renewed. There are cobras, to be sure, but, one day, we will play with them (11:6). We drink tears by the bowlful (Psalm 80:5), but—one blessed day—Christ will wipe away every tear.
The key, as Paul David Tripp points out in Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands, the book translation we finally finished video editing, is to interpret our circumstances biblically. Just as we need to counsel ourselves and preach the gospel to ourselves, we need to interpret our circumstances to ourselves. How ironic that interpreting is the work of my life, yet I often fail to interpret my circumstances biblically!
Whatever you are facing in this sin-twisted world, may the Sovereign Shepherd who orders our days comfort you and help you to interpret your circumstances through the lens of God’s eternal lovingkindness.