“No chastening for the moment seems enjoyable, but painful. But afterwards, to those who have been trained by it,  it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).

In the middle of the pain, no one enjoys the experience. Only in looking back–at some distant day–do you see how God used it. You lost a job, experienced the death of a loved one, went bankrupt, were falsely accused, had a near-death illness, and now at a great distance, you see what the Heavenly Father did with this in your life.  You are not the same person you were previously.

Life is understood only in looking backward, the saying goes. But it must be lived going forward.

It doesn’t work that way for everyone, Hebrews 12:11 is implying. For some, the trials are fatal.  It just depends.  To those who have been trained by it surely means “the people who have learned to give their woes to the Lord for His purposes.”

We can wallow in our defeat, be chained in despair by our sorrows and troubles, or we can rise above them by putting our trust in the Savior and finding His purposes.

In her book Character, Gail Sheehan tells of the lengthy rehabilitation Senator Bob Dole endured after his World War II injuries. German machine gunfire had hit him in the upper back and right arm. Medics gave him the largest possible dose of morphine, then wrote “M” (for morphine) on his forehead with his own blood, so no one who found him would give him a second, fatal dose.   Dole went through multiple surgeries and experienced recurring blood clots, life-threatening infections, and long periods of recuperation and therapy.

An interviewer once asked Senator Dole, “How did this delay your career plans?”

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One morning, as we were sitting at the breakfast table discussing memories good and bad, Bertha said something so profound that I wrote it down just so I’d get it just right.

We have a wagonload of memories of God’s people who have loved us and cared for us. But we also have painful memories that we wish we could edit out of our lives.  But the Holy Spirit has shown me that if He took out the pain and strife, He would also be removing the lovely things that happened during that same time. Or, that happened as a direct result of the bad event. 

The teacher who scarred a kid 

It brought up a painful memory from my junior high days. I was new in that school, surrounded by a hundred fellow seventh-graders. We had been herded into the gymnasium where the band director, Mr. Keating, was in charge.  He called everyone to order and announced that today we would be electing class officers.

Now, bear in mind that I was new there.  For the previous four years I’d gone to school in rural West Virginia and then we moved back to Alabama in time for my sixth grade in a two-room rural (really really rural!) school.  So, now, junior high and all the kids in our part of the world ride the bus to the county seat of Double Springs, AL for the rest of our schooling.  The junior and senior high classes all met in the same building.

Now, perhaps half of our class had gone to elementary school right there in town. The others of us were from small schools out in the county.  This means only the town kids knew each other.  So, when class officers were nominated, naturally they nominated the people they knew.  As a result, the town kids were raising their hands and nominating one another. Only they were being elected.

So, seeing an injustice–I thought–I raised my hand.

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