Where the Fruit of Affliction Grows
Three Kinds of Fruit The afflictions of John Bunyan gave us The Pilgrim’s Progress.
The afflictions of William Cowper gave us “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” and “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”
And the afflictions of David Brainerd gave us a published Diary that has mobilized more missionaries than any other similar work.
The furnace of suffering brought forth the gold of guidance and inspiration for living the Christian life, worshiping the Christian God, and spreading the Christian Gospel.
There is a certain irony to the fruit of these afflictions.
Bunyan’s confinement taught him the pilgrim path of Christian freedom. Cowper’s mental illness yielded sweet music of the mind for troubled souls.
Brainerd’s smoldering misery of isolation and disease exploded in global missions beyond all imagination. Irony and disproportion are all God’s way.
He keeps us off balance with his unpredictable connections. We think we know how to do something big, and God makes it small. We think that all we have is weak and small, and God makes it big.
Barren Sarah gives birth to the child of promise. Gideon’s 300 men defeat 100,000 Midianites. A slingshot in the hand of a shepherd boy brings the giant down. A virgin bears the Son of God.
A boy’s five loaves feed thousands. A breach of justice, groveling political expediency, and HiddenSmileOfGod.42470.int.qxd 9/21/07 10:05 AM Page 19 criminal torture on a gruesome cross become the foundation of the salvation of the world.
This is God’s way—to take all boasting off of man and put it on God.
“Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. . . .
‘Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29, 31, RSV) Not surprisingly (1 Peter 4:12), therefore, suffering fits into God’s design in ways that sometimes baffle us and test us to the limit.
This very baffling and testing is part of the design: “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4).
