Ready or Not (Friday Devotional)

 

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

- John 16:33

Unlike the dentist, the eye doctor doesn’t typically cause people to feel much anxiety. You read a few lines off the wall, you let the doc shine a light in your eyes, and you walk out with a new set of glasses or contact lenses (or, for the lucky few, a confirmation that your vision is still 20/20.) Nothing to worry about.

But there is one part of my annual eye exam that I dread every time. That’s when, with my chin resting on the lip of a device called the tonometer and my eyes looking forward, the doctor blows a sudden puff of air into my eye. Despite being warned beforehand that it’s coming, despite the memory of doing it the year before, despite mentally reminding myself it doesn’t even hurt, I can’t seem to help but violently jerk my head back every time the puff of air comes. It routinely takes 3 or 4 tries for the doctor to get the reading they need.

Sometimes you know something difficult is coming, you’ve mentally steeled yourself, you’ve made all necessary preparations—and you’re still not truly ready. All your efforts to avoid or distract from or lessen the damage of incoming trouble comes to naught, and all that’s left is to deal with what’s arrived. All you can do is figure out how to endure your trial.

In his final discourse before going to the cross, Jesus did not give his disciples a parachute from the kind of suffering he was about to endure. In fact, he made them an unsettling promise: in this world you will have trouble. The salvation he was bringing was not deliverance from difficulty or escape from agony.

What Jesus offered the Twelve, and what he offers us today, is something more enduring and more powerful than evasion: hope. What Jesus showed was a glorious truth: death is real, but so is resurrection. Sin is mighty, but grace is greater. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, he has overcome the world.

Faith in Jesus is not about dodging the arrows of the enemy, but about enduring them in Christ. There’s no avoiding or fully preparing for the various puffs of air—or full-blown gusts of wind—that will get blown into your eyes. But even if you’re not ready for whatever trouble comes your way, the Lord is. Lean on him—for whatever you face, the crucified Savior has overcome worse.