Peace in Difficulties — When I Suffered With Jesus

✦ Faith's Greatest Obstacle

Fosdick names the one obstacle that no amount of theology can bypass. Not the philosophical arguments against God. Not the scientific objections. Not the speculative doubts that leave many minds untouched. Trouble. The universal human experience of suffering — in ourselves, in others — that plunges faith into perplexity. Why, in God's world, should such things happen?

Every serious life meets this question. The pilgrim who rises before dawn to read Scripture meets it. The woman who was found at midnight in a hospital meets it. The mother who looks back with regret meets it. Fosdick says the answer does not begin with an explanation. It begins with a right practical attitude toward trouble. Not why does trouble exist — but what do we do with it when it arrives? 🙏

✦ Do Not Be Surprised

Peter's first word is do not be surprised. The fiery ordeal is not an accident. It is not a mistake. It is not something strange happening to you. It is a test — and the test has a purpose. Our best character comes when we suffer as a Christian.

Fosdick observes what everyone knows instinctively: our highest admiration is always reserved for those who master difficult crises. Not those who avoided them. Not those who were shielded from them. Not those whose lives were smooth and untroubled. Those who walked through the fire — and came out with something the fire could not destroy.

This is the woman with the issue of blood — twelve years of suffering that brought her to the hem. This is the youthful atheist whose passing through led to wisdom's crown. This is Daniel in the lions' den, Peter asleep in chains, Paul on his way to Jerusalem knowing what awaited him. Do not be surprised. The ordeal is not the end of faith. It is where faith's strongest character is forged. 🙏

✦ The Spirit of Glory Resting on You

Peter does not say suffering is pleasant. He says suffering for Christ's name means the spirit of glory — the Spirit of God Himself — is resting on you. Not arriving later. Not promised for the future. Resting. Present tense. Now. In the fire. In the trial. In the reviling. The Spirit of glory does not wait until the ordeal is over to show up. He is there in it — the fourth figure in the furnace, walking with the three holy children while the flames rage around them.

And Peter's closing instruction completes it: let those suffering in accordance with God's will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good. Entrust — the same trust Bowen named. The same trust that says "Take," says Satan; "trust," says God. In the middle of suffering, the command is not to explain it, not to understand it, not to resolve the perplexity. The command is to entrust yourself to a faithful Creator — and keep doing good. Trust and act. Both. Always both. 🙏

✦ The Blessing Her Mother Could Not See

A mother looked back at her daughter's life and saw a gap — a place where she felt she should have been and wasn't. The pain of a parent who believes she failed. And Le — Le turned to her mother and said the most extraordinary thing a daughter can say: it was a blessing.

Not bitterness. Not accusation. Not even forgiveness in the ordinary sense. Gratitude. She was grateful for the aloneness — because the aloneness was where she met Jesus. Her mother thought she left her daughter unprotected. But God was using the aloneness to teach Le the one lesson that would shape everything that followed: depend on Him alone.

When I suffered with Jesus, I developed the character and the independence God wanted for me. This is Peter's word made flesh. Rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings. She shared them. Not in theory. Not as a devotional concept. She was alone — and He was there. And in that furnace, like the three holy children, there was a fourth figure walking with her. And the fire did not destroy her. It forged her.

And the result — to depend on God alone for my life was the freedom I desired. That is not the words of the one who was abandoned. That is the words of the one who was entrusted to a faithful Creator. Peter's exact phrase. Her mother thought she had failed. God was answering her mother's Psalm 23 — even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for You are with me. The mother prayed it. The daughter lived it. And the daughter ended up being glad and shouting for joy — exactly as Peter promised. 🙏

✦ Not Immunity — Peace

Lewis in one sentence says what Fosdick took a chapter to build and Peter took a lifetime to learn. Not immunity from difficulties. Peace in them.

Not the absence of the fiery ordeal. Peace in it. Not the removal of the darkest valley. The Shepherd walking with you through it. Not a life without trouble. A life where trouble has lost its power to steal your joy — because the One who is with you is greater than anything set against you.

Le's mother wanted to give her daughter immunity — to shield her, to stand between her and the difficulty. But God gave her daughter something better: peace in the difficulty. The peace that comes from discovering that when everyone else is absent, He is present. Secretíssimo e presentíssimo — Augustine's God, the most hidden and the most present. Hidden from the mother's eyes. Present in the daughter's furnace.

And that peace — that peace born in the fire — is what Le carries now. Through Provence. Through every morning before dawn. Through every entry in this journal. It is the peace of the one who has been tested and knows. Not believes — knows. Because she was there. And He was there with her. And the dependence on Him alone became the freedom she desired. And the freedom became the joy. And the joy became thirty-three entries in gold and darkness — the stammering of a heart that was forged in the fire and came out shouting. 🙏