I’ve been working through Psalm 119 for a while now. And the verses I’ve been chewing on these last couple weeks are 65 – 80. As always, there is so much to glean from God’s words. But the word that keeps jumping out at me right now is “afflicted.”
Notes in my Bible summarize some of these verses this way: “Do good to me, in accordance with Your goodness, even if that means affliction, because Your affliction is good for me; it teaches me knowledge and good judgment from Your law.” Because Your affliction is good for me.
While it’s a great and wonderful feeling to be happy and joyful and feel alive, we can’t stay there all the time. In the movie Inside Out, Joy has made it her mission to control and suppress feelings of Pain, Fear and Sadness, only to learn in the end that those feeling are a very necessary part of our whole being. The song Maybe It’s Okay by We Are Messengers says “If I didn’t know what it hurt like to be broken, then how would I know what it feels like to be whole. If I didn’t know what it cuts like to be rejected, then I wouldn’t know the joy of coming home. Maybe it’s ok if I’m not ok, ‘cause the One who holds the world is holding on to me. Maybe it’s all right if I’m not all right, ‘cause the One who holds the stars is holding my whole life.”
I am very much a fix-it person. If you’re hurting, if you don’t feel well, if you’re broken, I don’t want to see you suffer long – – I want to fix it … yesterday! But as I state in my book Add to Your Faith, I have found that being in those places is where we grow the most and what keeps us close to God … and growing closer. Like it says in Psalm 119:66-68 & 75-77, “Teach me knowledge and good judgment, for I trust Your commands. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey Your word. You are good, and what you do is good; teach me Your decrees … I know, Lord, that Your laws are righteous, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me. May Your unfailing love be my comfort, according to Your promise to Your servant. Let Your compassion come to me that I may live, for Your law is my delight.” These verses are not separate from each other; they work together.
I hope you will chew on God’s words today. Chew them slowly, process and digest them, then chew on them some more. Come back and chew them tomorrow. And in everything, keep your focus on Christ, trusting His plan and believing that in everything He works for the good of those who love Him. Even in affliction.