Golly goshkins today's readings make for hard work!

Psalm 107:1-16
Numbers 20:1-13
1 Corinthians 10:6-13

So, we continue to sit with our same psalm, as we have become accustomed, and we recall it is the front part of the psalm from which we had a middle chunk first.  The Numbers reading provides the link between Sunday's (the death of Aaron) and yesterday's by describing the events at Meribah.  I'm not wild about the flash-back technique done badly that this gives us, but never mind.  These various stories, in whatever order we encounter them, lead us on to the reading from 1 Corinthians...

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,  and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.  Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.  Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play."   We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.  We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents.  And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.  These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.  So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.  No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

1 Corinthians 10:6 - 13

This is a pretty scary reading, with its stern warnings about 'putting Christ to the test' but I think it's the last little bit that I want to focus on:

No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

I wonder how those words sound to you today?  Do they ring true or are they hollow, empty or even, so it seems, false?

There is a saying that I've heard many times over the last couple of years, 'whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger'... some people find it really helpful, others don't.  I guess I lean towards the latter, not out of my own experiences, but those of others.  True, some people come through incredible hardship feeling that they have learned a lot, have grown as people, and that's great.  But others emerge broken, bitter, bewildered... and it is not always the ones you think it might be.

God is faithful and won't let you be tested beyond your strength... This raises lots of questions about God... does God test people (some people believe so, others do not) or does God 'merely' allow the inevitable trials of real life in a disordered world?  And how much does God allow?  How does God know what is too much for someone to bear?  No glib answers permitted here... evidence shows that some people are tried and tested beyond their ability to cope.

Way back 18 months ago I wrote 'Did God cause my cancer?  No.  Did God allow it? Yes'  Some people tell me that it mere semantics, that the two are the same - I think otherwise.  Did God accompany through it all?  Yes.  Was it easy?  No.  Am I stronger?  Not convinced (and physically, definitely not)!  Did I 'grow'?  I hope so.

How do you know my limits, Lord

How can you give me free will and still be confident I will cope?

Not enough simply to say, with the psalmist

You have known me since before my conception

Inadequate to re-assert that

Before a word is on my lips, you know it

Not enough to say

There is nowhere hidden from you

These may be truths

But they cannot expunge

Cannot remove

Cannot deny

The chill of fear

The ache of loss

The weakness of limb and sinew

The emptiness of uncertainty

The questions of insecurity

Never tested beyond my limit...

In that I trust,

To that I cling

Not naively, expecting to be lifted clear of my trials

But accompanied within them

My fear, your fear

My loss, your loss,

My weakness, your weakness

My emptiness, your emptiness

My insecurity held in your security

And looking back,

My own 'flash back technique'

I see

How it is true

That even when I walk a valley as dark as death

You are with me, comforting and protecting me

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Who can tell what trials

Or tests (if tests they be)

Lie before me?

Yet not one can defeat me

If I dare to believe

These words

Are

True.