purpose and adversity

The devotionals in Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest over the past week or so have really hit home with me.  I've read that same daily devotional for years off and on and they never get old , and often some speak right into my life, right as I need to hear it.  

His writings lately have been about God's purpose in your life and how that purpose plays out in adversity.  In the July 29th entry Chambers writes about clouds as the sufferings or providential circumstances that seem to contradict the sovereignty of God.  He goes on to say that the clouds actually help to teach us to walk by faith; if there were no clouds, we wouldn't have need of faith.  Clouds, he writes, are what we find at the feet of the Lord.  The clouds may make you doubt and may make you question, but ultimately, they can lead to a simple and child-like faith that He calls all of us to.  I've written a lot of about how the trial of losing Joshua has stripped away so many things, it puts life and faith and God and myself into perspective.  While I still can't say that I wouldn't change things if I could, I have come to see and appreciate what this particular set of clouds has brought into my life - or perhaps, more accurately, what those clouds have taken away.  

In the August 3rd devotion Chambers writes that for Jesus, Jerusalem was the culmination of God the Father's will in His life.  Think about that.  The place where he would be venerated, celebrated, and then mocked, crucified, and buried was the culmination of Jesus' life and ministry!  I had to let that sink in, because, honestly, that's not where I want my faith in God to lead me.  I want it to lead me to something comfortable and fulfilling for me personally.  In the midst of all that Jesus went through, if you are looking through human eyes, He had every reason to proclaim that God wasn't good - I mean look at what God led His own Son into!  Jesus' life at the Cross had to look like an utter failure to the world.  He was an unmarried, childless, itinerant rabbi who was being killed for proclaiming that He was the Son of God.  Jesus cried, He dreaded it, He asked for there to be another way, and when there wasn't, He trusted in God's purpose and not His own.  "The greatest thing to remember is that we go up to Jerusalem to fulfill God's purpose and not our own."  What in your life looks like tragedy or defeat, that could be the very thing that God is using to fulfill His purpose in you and in the world.  That tragedy, that circumstance, that trial could well be your Jerusalem.  

What in the world could God be doing with all the tragedy and sorrow that this world brings?  I honestly don't know, but I trust that he is redeeming what looks to be failure and what looks to contradict His goodness.  

Grace and peace.