Yup, I said it; I am a complainer! I look at my life and at the disdain I am forced to face from the choices I have made (i.e. Not having a career, having five children, supporting my husband, living from one day to the next, being a christian, etc). I honestly think about (probably at least 10 times a day) "Why me?" Haha, yeah it's not very funny, but it's true! I look at truths of my life and how it has been a struggle to hear and how other's have noted "Ever since you wanted to be a missionary," that my life has taken on an unalterable pallor. But this is good news, I can honestly say I have LOST MY LIFE! I have! My life as I knew it, lived for my goals and my expectations is long gone. I don't live even for the revival of that life, because it's ideas are so foreign to me now, but I still wish at times my loss wasn't so apparent and that's why I complain. "Does it have to be hard, God? Can't it be a little less hard?"
And then I read and have proof of a life like Corrie ten Boom's--who lived each hour of the war, losing more than I have every lost in my life! She lost her home, job, father, sister, brother, nephew, future as it was, her health, her safety, her modesty, her cleanliness, her clothes, and almost her life! Her sister and her father, her brother and her nephew did lose their lives! And I whine about it not being too hard in these tiny losses of my life!! It's laughable at how pathetic my complaints seem in light of what it costs others and especially what it cost Christ.
It arrested me, on this second reading, to hear her say to her sister--as they stood naked and cold in public-- reminding us 'Jesus was naked too!' You may have given up all pretense to earthly assurance, Larissa, but you haven't been naked it public or starved or beaten or forced to watch a loved one die. But you know what? Christ did! He took that punishment and then in response to his warning that "all who follow him will suffer" I respond with "But not too much, God! Not too much!"
You see, one part of my life I have yet to lose is my americanness. Oh, how it chafes me, nips at my heals, and yet how I cling to it striving for it, desiring it, mourning the loss of even a small part of the itch it gives to my soul. I am a product of the American church, a church without much knowledge of bearing. Without much knowledge of struggle, without much sense of fellowship in His sufferings, without a sense of what it means not just to believe but to suffer. That's why I am thankful for this book and it's testimony not just to a life lived in loss, but to a gospel, a bible, a God who knows those sufferings, sovereignly condones them and then sustains us throughout them.
So even though you are probably an American--as used to comfort and coddling as I am--still fighting to lose those last vestiges of your old man, pick up this book, read it and then remember how hard it was for Jesus to suffer on your behalf and also remember what paul says in Colossians, that he is bringing to completion the sufferings of Christ in his own body and be thankful that we have been called to fellowship with Him in the loss of ourselves and everything for the sake of the gospel! And find it not hard (preaching to myself) pilgrim if you bear much this side of heaven, for you will bear his image here and then know what you are looking at when you arrive to face Him in glory.
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