the other side of the story ...

it’s so mind-boggling to me how God can be two seemingly opposite things at the same time. grace and truth. love and justice. fully man and fully woman. not desiring for His children to suffer, and yet willing to allow struggles that will make us stronger and bring us closer to Him. He is all these things, and so much more, all at once, without compromising any of His divine essence.

now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture ... now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. all that i know now is partial and incomplete, but then i will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. (1 corinthians 13:9&12)

when writing yesterday’s blog, i knew there was another side to the story. and then, ironically, that’s what steve preached about today.

i am the true grapevine, and my Father is the vinedresser. every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. (john 15:1-2)

while it’s true that parents desire to give good things to their children, and will not make things overly difficult just because they don’t want their lives to be too easy, they are also rarely content to let their children get stuck in complacency. i wrote about this several weeks ago, but a parent who allows their child to just skate through life does little to prepare them for the real world. children who are sheltered from difficulty are like vines that are never tended - they may grow, but will not thrive, nor reach its fullest potential.

it makes sense to cut away the parts of a plant that are not producing fruit, but it seems counterintuitive to cut back the parts that are. however, a good gardener knows that this is what causes a plant to flourish, and God knows that this is what will make His children stronger and more beautiful. He seeks to remove the things from our lives that are not bringing Him glory, and will even cut away the things that are producing godly fruit for the sake of ultimately multiplying that fruit.

this may seem painful, and we may question how a good God who gives good gifts to His children could cause so much pain, but His definition of good is different from ours. His aims are higher than ours.

1 corinthians 13 finishes by saying that “three things will last forever - faith, hope, and love - and the greatest of these is love.”

above all else, how God moves in our lives will serve to promote and preserve these three priorities - especially love. though i still don’t believe that God ever inflicts arbitrary pain on His children, when we come to know and see Him fully, we will understand how and why the difficulties He allowed us to experience served a greater purpose. what we may perceive as pain is actually for our greater benefit. it is learning to depend on Him more fully and love on others more deeply that makes the 'pain' worth it in the end.