Thoughts from Eli
Hello, this is Eli Hirtzel (Julie's second son). My mother's decline has rendered her unable to write and post updates, but here is a meditation from my own heart and mind.
"It is good for me that I have been afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes."
Psalm 119:71
There is a particular badness in the death we see around us, not only the death of friends and family, but the aches and pains, sorrows and anxieties, and the soul's groanings also. We live in a sin-sick, death-cursed world.
We naturally tend to flee affliction, but the Bible presents another pathway: leaning in. By God's grace, believers can use affliction for great spiritual advantage. It is true that some Christians wrongly brought affliction upon themselves, starving themselves and even bludgeoning their own bodies like Shaolin monks. Self-abuse is unbiblical and wrong. But have we overcorrected? Do we too quickly flee God-ordained affliction? When God puts us in affliction's schoolhouse, do we devote ourselves to the school that hands out diplomas of Christ-likeness, or do we do what we can to drown out the teaching and slip out of class? One writer, Thomas Case, said, "It is the great mistake and folly of men that they make more haste to get their afflictions removed than sanctified."
How do we lean into affliction? We remember the gospel. The word "gospel" means good news, but this good news has a gruesome backstory. The only reason the gospel is gospel is because of much affliction. The second chapter of Philippians shows the horrifying path God's Son took to make the gospel truly good news. He took the path of affliction. He who shared in eternal fellowship and bliss with God the Father and the Holy Spirit emptied Himself of His honor, took on a body and soul in a sin-cursed world, humbled himself to the point of death, the death on a cross, bearing a crown of thorns and the sins of His people that in His death they might live. Without Christ's affliction, there is no good news. Through much affliction, God brought innumerable souls to Himself.
Strangely and wonderfully, God's word connects Christian affliction to Christ's. The apostle Paul frequently reminds the Churches that believers are "in Christ," which shows the believer's union with their savior. Paul can say, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" because of this union (Galatians 2:20). But just before that, he says, "I have been crucified with Christ," which paints a different picture of this union. How strange. But it should be no surprise when we remember that Christ was "despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3), and even amidst affliction, Christ said, "'I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and in vain," as his experience was hopeless agony (Isaiah 49:4). But, this Christ, Christians claim. Although affliction can look hopeless, God has exceedingly good uses for it.
Christ's God is our God and still uses affliction to His perfect good ends. The Bible says it is "better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting" (Ecclesiastes 7:2) and that we can "count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience" (James 1:2, 3). In light of the Bible's view of affliction, we can understand what Thomas Brooks meant when he wrote, "Afflictions are but as a dark entry into our Father's house; they are but as a dirty lane to a royal palace."
The Lord started my mother's Christian walk in the school of affliction. Her mother's cancerous death prompted her to take seriously her mortality, sin, and need for a savior; Christ saved her soon after. But what followed was more affliction: her father's health problems, two miscarriages, her own cancer, the fear of leaving five children motherless, and countless other hard providences. Now, she is nearing graduation, she is learning her last lessons on Christ-likeness, and everyone can see she is receiving high marks. Her affliction is a direct expression of her union with Christ. When her body aches, He says, "I abide in this one." And, when her soul is disquieted, he says, "She looks more like me today than yesterday." Every cancerous cell is a sign of affliction, but each carries the increasingly clear inscription "Well done, good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:23).
