“Now I’m glad—not that you were upset, but that you were jarred into turning things around. You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.” (2 Corinthians 7:9–10, The Message)
How well The Message captures Paul's argument here. Distress in our lives—whether financial or physical or spiritual or emotional—can lead us in one of two directions: It can lead us to God, or it can lead us away from God. The way that we allow it to lead us will in large part determine our relationship with God.
The pain that drives us back into the way of salvation, that causes us to focus on the eternal and not the temporal, that helps us clarify that we are not God, but that God is God; this is pain that we will not ultimately regret (think the story of Job).
Pain that drives us away from God leads only to despair and denial (think the end of Mark Twain's infamous book The Mysterious Stranger).
The book of Psalms is filled with God-worshiping human beings with distress that will ultimately drive them to God; this is why I love the psalms.
It's okay to question God when you are in distress; but allow the distress to humble you and to drive you to God in all his mystery, wonder, and love. He sent his son to endure the worst distress imaginable. For you.
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