Beauty in Adversity

It’s the middle of November, and the leaves are in full color in upstate South Carolina. The colors aren’t quite as brilliant as last year’s, but I still have a beautiful drive home from work to enjoy for a week or two. I once read a Bible tract called “Beauty in Adversity,” which compared the Christian’s sufferings of adversity to what happens to the trees every year. The color means that the leaves are dying. And in their death they dazzle the eye with breathtaking beauty. When Christians suffer in a way that reflects Christ, they exhibit His attractiveness to other Christians and to an unbelieving world.

I’ve been thinking about this theme lately for several reasons. On Saturday November 3, many of the men in our church attended a prayer-breakfast that concluded our latest Bible study. For the past three months we’ve been studying the book of Job, using Layton Talbert’s new book, Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job, as a guide. After the regular meeting about 20 men stayed for nearly two more hours discussing Job and Dr. Talbert’s book, with the author in attendance. We were able to ask Brother Talbert questions concerning specific matters in Job and specific statements in his book. Meditating on this section of Scripture has frequently been a blessing to me, and Layton really brought out the meaning of Job in his book and in his comments at our meeting. One paragraph in his book describes the kind of suffering that Job faced and what his suffering means to us:

Affliction is suffering that is not only underserved but not even understood…. This kind of suffering comes only through the decision or permission of God (hence it is “permitted” by God). He may or may not originate this kind of suffering; but because He is sovereign, He alone claims ultimate responsibility for it (hence it is “sent” by God). It may come in the form of “natural” circumstances or through the actions (even the sinful actions) of people. It may affect us directly, or indirectly in the form of “collateral damage.” How does one interpret and respond to that kind of suffering? That is the issue at the eye of the storm swirling around Job (Beyond Suffering, p. 15).

Responding submissively to God, especially in the midst of suffering that we can’t explain, causes us to give off the fragrance of the One who said, “Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God (Hebrews 10:7). Patiently enduring adversity demonstrates that, like our Lord, we too have committed our spirit into the hands of our Father (Luke 23:46). This type of submission comes only from God and proves to believers and to many unbelievers the reality, the nearness, and the grace of God. Many former opposers and persecutors have been drawn to the Savior through the dying testimonies of the saints, whether suffering cruel martyrdom or succumbing to “natural causes.”

This leads me to another reason I’ve been meditating on this theme lately. Last week marked the first anniversary of the death of a young local woman. You may not be familiar with the name Hannah Sobeski, but she became something of a “celebrity” in our area. Hannah was a 17 year-old rising senior at Dorman High School in nearby Spartanburg when she discovered that she had sarcoma, an aggressive form of cancer. She spent the summer in Texas taking treatments and returned home in time to start her senior year. This was reported widely in the local news because she accepted God’s will for her life with a meek and quiet spirit, expressing her faith in Jesus Christ. In some ways she was no different from any other teen, looking forward to graduation, college, marriage and family someday. In other ways she was head and shoulders above the crowd, and the adversity God entrusted her with provided a platform to display His grace. And people noticed.

On a chilly Friday night in October 2006 Hannah was crowned Homecoming Queen. It was an emotional night for Dorman. You wouldn’t know it to look at the pictures in the paper but she barely had the strength to make it across the field with her dad. Also in attendance was her doctor, who had some difficult news to tell her the next day. Her tumor had doubled in size and there was nothing that could be done. She had only a few weeks to live.

Hannah died about four weeks later on November 9. Her family had maintained a daily journal on the Web, chronicling her progress in the treatments, her deteriorating condition, and her ever-renewing faith. On Hannah’s last day they noted in their morning entry her quickly weakening condition. As news of her imminent departure spread across the school and community, friends started arriving to see her one last time. As long as she was able she greeted them and encouraged them to keep believing in Christ. About fifty friends and family were in the house with her, and many more were filling the yard, praying and singing praise songs. At the news of her death there were tears of grief but also tears of hope and joy. They knew that all was now well with their girl.

Hannah’s mother Debbie and aunt Hope Houchins founded Hannah’s Hope Ministries to reach people in life crises with the Gospel. They maintain a blog on their site which they update practically every day, frequently with devotional thoughts from their Bible reading. Last week on November 8 Debbie Sobeski posted a remembrance of Thursday – One Year Later. It is in the form of a prayer, as are many of her posts. In this remembrance she said, “The details of this day I don’t ever want to forget. I experienced You Lord, You showed us Your glory. Your presence was so very real it penetrated every part of our home. Each day I continue to ask You to do the same – penetrate my home with the presence of the Living God.” She confesses her pain, but also her faith: “You know, Lord, I would never want to go through this again but Lord, You know I wouldn’t trade anything for the reality of Your presence in my life as I have experienced it over the last year and a half.”

I can make the same confession of feeling overwhelmed by God’s presence as I observed the Lord taking a friend of mine to Himself through the medium of cancer three years ago. As long as he was physically able, he gave glory to God and urged us to keep trusting Him. Though it was heart-rending it was beautiful because of God’s enabling weak flesh to be strong in faith. That gives me hope that my faith is real and that it will not fail, but prevail, because its author is God.

When we suffer patiently, entrusting ourselves to the Lord, we are entering into the “fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10) and displaying the beauty of His grace to others. The natural tendency in adversity is to question God and perhaps even to become bitter. How should we interpret our sufferings and respond to them? By reminding ourselves of what Layton Talbert reminded us at our book discussion: “Whatever adversity God puts on us, He did it to Himself first when He judged our sins in His own Son on the Cross.”

Some resources to encourage us to trust God and rejoice in our trials:

Talbert, Layton. Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job. (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 2007), 378 pp. A thorough and practical exposition of Job. [You can also purchase an autographed copy from the Mount Calvary Bookstore.]

Houchins, Hope. Hannah’s Hope: A Journey of Faith. (Spartanburg, SC: Hannah’s Hope Ministries, 2007), 269 pp. A day-by-day journal of Hannah’s six-month battle with sarcoma.

Cook, Faith. Singing in the Fire (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), 193 pp.

A wonderful book containing biographical vignettes of some not so well known Christians who glorified God in their dying testimonies.

Beauty in Adversity