What a week it was last week. As if to remind us that we are in a battle that very few, if any have appreciation of, let alone any real understanding. Have you found yourself wondering why a lot of things happen that shouldn't happen, and don't happen that should? In those times when things make so little sense, we may even feel that we are justified in saying the same thing as Jesus said on the cross, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" When you can stand 2,000 years away from it, and quietly read the accounts in the gospels, we might be forgiven for asking why Jesus would have said that, considering the cross was the ultimate focus of his commitment.

"Why?" is not just an exclamation from the doubters. It is an exclamation of all those who feel the pain of the curse of sin, and feel the intensity of the battle. It is not a statement of anger, nor of unbelief, just of the experience of conflict.

We would have known so much of the bounty of the world and of the abundance of it’s possessions, and so much of the comforts of this life, hardly qualify as sufferers for the faith. But there's a funny things about suffering. It is not easily qualified and compared. To someone who is experiencing any kind of pain, it is always pain. Only a few would cast it aside as minute because they sense the measure in comparison to someone else. To most it is pain just the same. And when we feel pain we naturally ask, "Why?"

The answer to that question will not be found in a struggle to know what we have not been told. It will only be found within the refuge of what we already know. Deuteronomy 29:29 is an easy text to remember: "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."

When we don't know, we must arm ourselves with all we do know. That's the safe way through.

Keep persevering.

Pastor Brian Medway.