Anna Resurget

On Sunday morning, as many others were doing around the country, our Sunday School was having a Zoom conference. The members gathered in front of their computers and we each stared at the Hollywood Squares version of our classroom. We have had a good time meeting this way, but we do miss the physical presence we have been avoiding during this period of the Coronavirus.

We have been reading through Romans together and this past Sunday we were in Romans 6. In trying to express the importance of the passage beginning here and extending through chapter 8, I mentioned that when I was in college I was encouraged to memorize Romans 6-8. It was the first large block of text that I had committed to memory and it began a process that then led to the book of Philippians and then James.

Later in the week, Timberley told me she was encouraged by my testimony of scripture memory and decided to revisit her own scripture memorization. She decided to work on Romans 5-8.

She ran into a snag, however, when she read 5:3 in the 1984 NIV: “Not only so [that is, not only do we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God], but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance.” That was fine. Until she read the revised NIV from a few years ago in which it says, “but we also boast in our sufferings.” She asked me which was correct. This question led to a good study on the Greek word translated both as “rejoicing” and as “boasting.” Is this a positive or a negative term? Is this “boasting” a kind of prideful exhibition?

As it turns out, the term is rather neutral, and it has to pick up the positive or negative meaning from the larger context. In the context of Romans 5:3 it is clearly intended to be positive. Which leads to the next question. What does it mean to “rejoice” or to “boast” in our sufferings? What sufferings are these?

Today is the 12th year since Anna died. It is usually a quiet day for us. It is a sad day. It is a reflective day. Since the Sunday following May 7th is always, I believe, Mother’s Day. That weekend is one in which Timberley and I, and Sam when he was still with us, would go away for the weekend and take a retreat from the Mother’s Day celebrations and flower-giving in our church.

One year we went to the Outer Banks. It was a beautiful weekend. Another year we went camping at Mount Mitchell. It was an interesting weekend. But we always spend time away. What to do this year?

The Coronavirus this year took away the need to escape the gaiety of church life since none of us are meeting anyway. But Timberley took care of that decision with certainty yesterday. We are in the process of cleaning and painting our garage. Yesterday morning I went to a neighbor’s house to help her with a small task there. When I returned home I found Timberley sitting in a chair in obvious pain, with a towel wrapped around her foot and leg.

“I sprained my ankle going out to the garage,” she said, holding back tears. For Timberley, of course, the tears are mere emotion grabbers. This is a woman that gave birth twice with no pain medicine. An 8 out of 10 on a pain scale for a normal person makes her twitch. So her tears were there to let me know that this was serious.

To make a long story short, she was wrong. She did not sprain her ankle. She broke her foot. She will now be spending the next six weeks in a boot with crutches.

So our May 7th this year was spent visiting doctors and getting x-rays. It certainly kept our attention busy for the day.

Timberley asked me last night, or this morning, if the suffering in her leg was related to the suffering of Romans 5:3? “Of course it is,” I answered. But how? The suffering of her leg, along with the suffering of the virus sickness, the suffering of the economic depression we are in, the suffering people’s mental stability during the quarantine period, the suffering of fractured relationships due to physical separation, the suffering of fractured relationships because of rising political and other tensions, the suffering of a little girl falling from a cliff 12 years ago, the suffering of a grieving mother and father and big brother in the ensuing years, all of this suffering “counts,” as Timberley likes to say. (“But who’s ‘counting’?” I always reply.)

All of this suffering, according to Paul develops perseverance. He goes on to say that perseverance develops character, and character develops hope. And hope–the muscular kind of biblical hope–does not disappoint. Christians are sure of the things to come. We do not walk around wondering. We do not merely guess at things. We have hope. Real hope. And according to Paul, that kind of hope begins when we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that we are participating in some small or large way in a broken world that Christ came to fix. We are experiencing in some small or large way the sufferings of Christ as he died in our place. We are experiencing in some small or large way the sufferings common to all mankind that bind us together before our God.

So on this May 7th, do not begrudge the difficulties you are experiencing. Do not think that God has cast you aside. Do not think that God does not care about your sufferings. He cares. He loves you so much that he sent his son to suffer and die in your place in order to pave a way out of this world of suffering and into a glorious inheritance that will never fade away, and in which there will be no more tears of sorrow.

Come, Lord Jesus.