Hebrews 11:13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.

We have a very limited grasp of faith. Even if we aren’t sucked into the “Prosperity Gospel” as such, we still tend to expect faith to usher in some kind of rose-tinted existence. The Biblical record says very clearly that is a deception, fostered by the devil, who tells us the minute things get hard that God doesn’t love us and He’s mean and unfair. We’ve got to remember what Jesus said just before He went to Gethsemane: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) We will have trouble, but in the middle of that trouble we have peace available in Christ. The problem comes when we fail to appropriate the peace that is available to us, and that’s where faith comes in. When we accept that God is under no obligation to be good to us but He is anyway, then gratitude will go a long way in countering all the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Shakespeare put it. Knowing that God loves us so much He sent His Son to die for us gives us “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding” that Paul spoke of. (Philippians 4:7) Recently I was watching a video testimony of Andrew Klaven, I think it was, and he mentioned a comic strip of Hagar the Horrible his father had kept, in which Hagar was on his boat in rough seas and was ranting against God, saying “Why?” In the comic, the reply comes back, “Why not?” I don’t recommend we get our theology from Hagar the Horrible, but we need to remember that we live in a fallen world, and fix our hearts and our affections on our Lord and His kingdom.

This is almost painfully close to home for me, because my parents came to Japan as single missionaries before WWII, were married here, and are buried here. They did see fruit to their ministry, but not in quantities that would seem appropriate to the effort. I’ve been in Omura as a missionary since 1981, and again, there has been fruit, but this could hardly be called a large church. The whole issue of not belonging has been huge in my life, not being accepted as Japanese because of biology and hardly feeling American, either. I certainly know what it is to be an “alien and stranger,” anywhere I have been. (My college roommate was a Psychology major and he had me take all sorts of psychological tests for his Abnormal Psychology class, because I was “stranger than anyone else he knew.”) In all of that, I have grown to be remarkably happy, to the point that people expressly say that about me, because I am deeply aware of God’s grace toward me and I know that what awaits me will make every temporal trouble fade into absolute insignificance. (2 Corinthians 4:17) I don’t have to be anxious about anything, because I know I’m a child of the Creator of the universe, and He loves me.

Father, thank You for this reminder. All of the things of life tend to distract me from this glorious reality. Help me indeed rest, relax, and rejoice in You, just as You have told me to do, so that Your purposes may be fulfilled on Your schedule for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!