It Is Good For Me That I Have Been Afflicted

Psalms 119:71 It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.

We all go through difficult times. For me, the reward of the difficult times in life is a more intimate relationship with God as those seasons tend to draw me nearer to the One who sustains me and can give me wisdom if I listen and obey Thus, those times do, as this verse states, produce a better understanding of God's word, his statutes. Yet, I have noticed they can also produce pride -- pride at coming through the trial in such a "spiritual" fashion. It is generally not purposeful pride, perhaps not even recognizable as pride until sometime later. I think a season of affliction is different. It has the potential to take us beyond the superficial and reveal the depths of our human depravity in a very personal way. It is during those times we learn that the law of sin and death applies to us as well. Not that we necessarily have a time of untethered sin, but that those afflictions come in the form of seemingly untethered blows that ultimately (and mercifully) crush through previously undetected hard hearts and reveal sin -- the very sin for which Christ died. Many of us are are considered good people by our peers. We live moral lives for the most part and try to do good things. I think it is difficult in our culture to be acutely aware of the depth of our sin. I know it is difficult for me. It truly did take a time of intense affliction to show me my depravity and ultimately produce in me a new level of appreciation for what Jesus did for me -- unfathomable.

There are those verses that seem to be a recurring theme. Psalms 8:4 is one that I keep coming back to... "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" What a precious Savior...