For the past year my children and I have belonged to a local Lutheran home school group that meets once a week for the morning. In this group one of the mothers is from Hungary. I love her. She is different and so not like all of us entitled Americans. A couple weeks ago I was talking with her about her home country and I asked her what one of the main differences is between America and Hungary. She responded, without even hesitating, that Americans "try too hard to be happy". I laughed out loud and asked what on earth she meant. She explained that in her country people do not smile very much. She said if she were to smile and wave at someone on the street there they would be afraid of you and think you were crazy. She said people are not afraid to admit life is hard and they don't feel the need to "be fake like Americans". At first I took offense at that last part as I truly don't ever intend to be fake in my polite gestures of greeting or smiles that are on my face.
But I have to admit after thinking about it for a couple weeks I actually find myself longing for a country like that. Why is it that any time I talk about suffering, especially to my family, they ask me if I'm depressed? Good grief we are so obsessed with diagnosing and "treating" EVERYTHING. Why can't people just be people? What is so wrong with being sad? Or at least SERIOUS?
Life for a Christian is like being stuck in the labor of childbirth for your entire life. There are moments of peace and joy when you're on a break between contractions and you realize how soon, very soon, your relief will come and your joy will be complete, but there are many many many moments of hell. Anguish. Despair. Fear. Suffering. Agony. Isolation. Battle. And I am sick and tired of well meaning Christians putting on this happy face as if they are not a Christian if they aren't happy all the time. And of course genuine happiness is good, but why is something wrong with someone simply because they are in a period of hardship?
There is a huge difference between happiness and faith, between happiness and trust, between happiness and contentment, between happiness and hope, between happiness and salvation, and between happiness and Jesus Christ.
We are fighting a battle, an all out war against the forces of evil that tempt us and prey on us and love to play between trying to make us happy and complacent or filled with terror and despair. Both are dangerous and threaten to rip away even the elect.
But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord that we have a Lord who is acquainted with our grief and suffering and has come to redeem us and one day, to wipe every tear from our eyes. Christ is coming as He said.
Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has hthe arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
iand like a root out of dry ground;
jhe had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 kHe was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and lwe esteemed him not.
4 mSurely he has borne our griefs
yet we esteemed him stricken,
nsmitten by God, and afflicted.
5 oBut he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
pand with his wounds we are healed.
6 qAll we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
rand the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:1-6
