My 3.5 year old son loves puzzles, and I love watching him work on puzzles…trying to fit one piece of a puzzle next to another, but realising it doesn’t quite fit… then turning it around, or trying another piece. Sometimes, I have to resist the urge to tell him where a particular piece should go, especially when I can see that he is finding it quite challenging. But, if I told him where each piece should be, then where’s the fun and challenge in that? How would he learn? After all, don’t challenges help us learn and become better? So I watch, keeping my hands to myself, and you know what? Eventually, he always figures it out. This way, he has grown from the early days of his first puzzle, which consisted of just 6 pieces, to 8, 10, 12, 16, 24, 28 pieces, and recently, he finished a 50-piece puzzle all by himself. No help from me at all. Unless you count my cheering him from the side-lines :-). It brings Proverbs 25:2 to mind, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (NKJV).

Recently, while studying the Bible, I came across this passage in Luke 22: 31-32, “31 Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

I have read this passage a couple of times before, but this time around, the prayer Jesus prayed struck me. He didn’t pray that Satan will not sift the disciples as wheat, or that Satan will not be able to carry out his plan, or that Satan should die by fire, or that Satan will not see the disciples to test them. No, he prayed that Simon’s faith will not fail. And, in addition to that, he told Simon, “when you have come through the time of testing”, strengthen your brothers (MSG).

It’s interesting isn’t it? Jesus knew that sometimes it is necessary for us to go through challenging times‎. He also knows that by going through such times, we will not only come out stronger, we will be in a better position to strengthen those around us.

When I think back to some of the challenging times I’ve had, I can imagine that if I had known about some of the things that were going to happen before hand, I would have most likely prayed that they should never happen! But, when I look back now, I realise how much I learnt during such periods, how much my faith and trust in God grew, how much stronger I became, and how some of those experiences have been shared with others and have hopefully been a blessing to them. As such, I am actually quite grateful that I went through such challenges. So knowing all these, why is it still so scary to accept that sometimes difficult situations happen, and that being a Christian does not mean an automatic exclusion from bad things happening to us? Yes, I know that there are times when God’s people were excluded from evil, as in the case of the Passover, but lest we forget, prior to the Passover, they had been in bondage to the Egyptians for 400+ years! They had been oppressed, robbed of their freedom, forced to carry out backbreaking work, endured whippings, the murder of their children, and all sorts of other unimaginable horrors. Not exactly a permanent exclusion from difficult times right?

Sometimes, we think, or are told, sadly, that we pass through certain challenges because we don’t have faith. I once used to think like that too. But over time, I’ve come to realise that this is not necessarily the case. Life is actually like a bed of roses, contrary to the popular saying, because roses do have thorns (or rather prickles) in them. Jesus guarantees that we will have tribulations in this world. John 16:33 in the NLT says, “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” The Message Translation says: “In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties”. “Will”, not even “may”. As such, the theory that God’s people are somehow exempted from hard times has quite a few holes in it. Further evidence is in Hebrews 11:35-40.

In all this though, one key thing that matters is how these challenges affect you. I would have been a bit sad if my son had, after a few tries, decided that puzzles were not for him because they were challenging. Yes he has had times when he abandons a puzzle he is working on, but what I really like is that he eventually comes back to it and tries again.

In our Christian walk, one of the main goals we have is to become more like Christ. And that’s what difficulties and tribulations can do… mould us, or refine us, as 1 Peter 1:7 states. A second thing they can do is to help us “strengthen the brethren”, as Jesus told Simon. There is something quite powerful about the encouragement of someone who has walked the path you are currently on, who knows where the thorns by the roadside come out and cause you to bleed, who knows where the waters are so deep, drowning seems almost inevitable. Someone who just gets it, you know? It’s like going to a doctor and the doctor asks, “where do you feel the pain? How does it feel?” And you don’t quite know how to translate the pain into words, so you sit there stuttering… but then this nurse who happens to be in the room has experienced that particular ailment, and she knows the words to use, and she starts describing it, and it matches everything you are feeling to a T. And you just keep going “Exactly! That’s it! Absolutely!” Somehow it takes a little pressure off you, you know? Knowing that someone knows, that they’ve been there and come out on the other side. Or maybe they are still there, but have learnt to cope with it.

So then, why should something that can have such beautiful end results be prayed against so much? I guess because it feels so scary… it’s hard going into a dark tunnel not knowing whether you’ll come out in one piece at the other side, or whether you’ll run into a high-speed train coming from the other end. But in all this, when everything feels so hard and uncertain, our confidence, our peace should be in Jesus, who loves us and is always with us. We should also remember that each challenge we face is like a push upwards to a goal, sometimes it can be gentle and slow, like a snail crawling up a wall; and sometimes it can be like a space rocket being launched into space. Going so fast we barely have time to breathe. And sadly, the truth is that sometimes we really just need to go through an experience to learn something… someone else telling us may not quite cut it, just like my son won’t learn how to really do puzzles if I told him where to put each piece.

The funny thing is, two days before writing this, I got some not-so-good news, and then, literally right in the middle of writing this, I got two more. All in all, it’s been one of those weeks, so writing this almost felt like I was talking to myself. Somehow though, in the midst of all this, in addition to knowing that I am learning and becoming a better person, there are two things that have helped. This quote from Don Moen: “Life may not be good all the time, but God is good all the time”; and the fact that, as Ephesians 1:11 (ESV) says, God‎ “works all things according to the counsel of his will”. I believe there is a reason behind everything that happens, and whether or not we know or understand it at that point, there is always a reason. And sometimes, that just has to be enough for us.