It's difficult to offer a "bon mot" to cover almost two weeks of illness and hence frustration. Something that would fit into a comix format, for instance, like the Calvinistic: "Snow Goons are bad news. " Or the Hobbesian rejoinder, "Live and don't learn, that's us."
It's worthy of note that Job prayed to die, but didn't. He never knew the "whole truth and nothing but the truth"; perhaps after God's "Speech" or encounter, better said, he knew better than to ask.
Hezekiah on the other hand was wont to want his own life back even after Isaiah told him of his looming sickness unto death. So he went over the prophet's head and got another 15 years, but in so doing set the stage for the Babylonian Captivity. "Life" is not an unqualified good; yet, "What will a man give in exchange for his life?" Not only his own skin, but the punishment of all around him, as his ancestor David did when he asked God to sent a plague on the people--for his own sin- rather than go through being harassed again for a season, something he already knew how to tolerate. Not unto David's death, mind you, but unto persecution, a sickness not unto death. (The implied promise was that he would survive being chased around Israel, as happened before he became king.)
Speaking of kings, Jesus noted that, "scarce for a good man would someone die," much less for his enemies. David did not intend to die or even take punishment for his countrymen, most of whom had done him no harm, or had greatly helped him.
(I must quickly add here that I certainly hope, if there were no other choices, that I would take a fatal hit for my wife; there is that protective instinct which I have, and most men have, however atrophied; that I hope would overcome my instinct for survival at any cost; but without His Spirit, I would as likely fail as Peter failed Jesus.)
I really don't know how to pray because I don't know how to wait, much less to let the results up to Someone other than myself. Yet our faith in ourselves is "little faith," in which, according to our internal/secret evaluation of our track record, we always come up short and hence are never satisfied with anything or anyone. As I told someone today, there is not an individual who is not a hypocrite, who lives up to his own standards, much less anything higher. And there is no one that doesn't operate by a double set of rules, no matter how negative or pessimistic or pietistic etc. they may be.
Overall, we could learn more from Job than we can from the late Hezekiah, at least that is what I have learned from my most recent internment. I did not, by the way, pray to die so y'all are still stuck with me. For now. (Wannabe Job's friend? Facebook!!!)
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Now if you were a Catholic, you'd understand that this was all redembptive suffering. If you had offered up your pain, grace would have showered down on the world somewhere - kind of like that thing when the butterfly flaps its wings and there is a hurricane somewhere. ;-)
ReplyDeleteMay it be so! Except the hurricane part, which is, like Mr. Eliot , most "unpleasant to meet"!
ReplyDeleteI am going to make the rest of my thoughts on the matter a general post, muttering about eternal redemption and temporary suffering; and I assure you I have stopped coughing--well, almost. As I say to my suffering cougher, "He who does not cough, dies!" Kind of goes with the breathing part, as do our sighs! ( Did you know that artificial ventilators have a sigh setting)(Sigh...)