For those of you following our daily Scripture reading plan, maybe you noticed a common theme in the readings earlier this week was striving.
In the Genesis 16 reading, strife takes over Abram’s household after Hagar becomes pregnant. In this case, the strife is self-inflicted. After years of waiting for God to keep His promises (and probably tired of hearing her husband talking about them) Abram’s wife Sarai decides to take over, and says to her husband: “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps, I can build a family through her.” (Genesis 16:3)
What could possibly go wrong with that idea, right? But Abram listens to his wife, and two verses later she makes him pay: “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.” (Genesis 16:5)
In the Nehemiah 4 text, the strife comes through the attack of external enemies. Sanballat and Tobiah stand in opposition to the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem. First, they ridicule. Then, they plot and threaten violence. As work on the wall progresses, they attack with a constant barrage of viable threats, pushing Nehemiah to commit half of his labor force to guard duty. The other half are obliged to work with one hand on their weapons. Meanwhile, the work itself is daunting as the laborers are overwhelmed by the piles of rubble and the magnitude of the job at hand.
Matthew 14 depicts the disciples of Jesus striving in a boat against the “natural” forces of a stormy sea. In the middle of their exhausting struggle, rowing against the wind and the waves, they see what appears to them a ghost walking on the water, and they cry out in terror.
In the Acts 14 passage, the striving comes even as the gospel of Christ is boldly preached. After healing a man in Lystra, who had been lame from birth, Paul and Barnabas are hailed as gods incarnate, and they have to use all their powers of persuasion to stop the locals from sacrificing bulls to them. Before the crowd disperses, however, the mood changes completely. Enemies stir up the crowd, which then stone Paul, drag him outside the city and leave him for dead.
The strife in each of these texts is not unlike the strife you and I face every day. It is draining, frustrating, exhausting, overwhelming, terrifying, impossible . . . Some striving is of our own making. Some comes against us because we belong to a fallen world. Still other finds its source in enemies and/or spiritual darkness. We strive continually against our own flesh, the world and the devil, as well as against the elements of creation awaiting redemption.
But God and His kingdom purpose are not thwarted by that which brings us strife or opposition. In fact, the greater and overriding theme in each of these four texts is that the supernatural plan of God trumps the flesh, the world and the devil, every time. In each storyline, God accomplishes His purpose against the odds in a miraculous way.
In the Genesis story, God’s promised son eventually comes to Abram and Sarai in their old age. In Nehemiah, despite the opposition, the wall is built in only 52 days. In Matthew, when Jesus (the apparent ghost) steps into the boat, the wind and the waves cease. And in Acts, as his companions gather around his “dead” body, Paul gets up, returns to the city and the following day continues preaching the gospel in the next town.
Paul and Barnabas then return to Lystra and the other cities in which they had struggled, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. They say to them (and to us): “‘We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.’” (Acts 14:22)
So, in the midst of our hardships, in the midst of our strivings, may we be encouraged to look for God’s miracle, remembering the cross is the way to the crown.
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