Trouble…and Grace

6/22/22 Glenda Simpkins Hoffman

It’s been another week with a lot of trouble in the world including another shooting, this time in a church in Alabama, and even a troubling gun-related incident at Tysons Corner Mall on Saturday. The January 6 hearings are in the news. While the temperatures in our area have been surprisingly pleasant, there have been numerous dangerous heatwaves around our country and the world. In a recent conversation with several people, we said we know of more people with COVID in the last two months than the previous two years. My husband and I are among them. But I am aware of and praying for others who are experiencing even more severe health concerns and uncertainty. 

In the midst of this, I happened to finish a book by Gary Schmidt titled Trouble. This is how it begins: “Henry Smith’s father told him that if you build your house far enough away from Trouble, then Trouble will never find you. So the Smiths lived where their people had lived for exactly three hundred years, far away from Trouble, in Blythbury-by-the-Sea, where the currents of the Atlantic give up their last southern warmth to the coast of Massachusetts before they head to the cold granite shores of Maine.” 

In this opening paragraph, you get the sense that despite the father’s motto, trouble is ahead for this family. In case you want to read this riveting story for yourself, I won’t tell you all that happens. But I will say that much of the “trouble” is reminiscent of our lives and the times we live in. Tragedy strikes this family, which links them to another family who are refugees from Cambodia, and ultimately impacts their entire community. It is heartbreaking to learn of the painful past and present pain of the refugee family. But the story serves as a good reminder to us that so many in the world, even in the last year, have had to flee their homes to escape violence in places all around the world including Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Central and South America. 

There is a lot of trouble in Schmidt’s story for individuals, families, and an entire community. The sin and brokenness is reflected in misunderstandings, hatred, racism, and even violence. The various individuals in the story deal with the trouble in different ways that are not surprising but still sad. Some withdraw and isolate themselves while others lash out in anger projecting their pain on others. Some remain powerless to do anything and are resigned to a seemingly never-ending cycle of pain inflicted on them by others. 

Schmidt is artful in crafting this narrative and drawing the reader in. What becomes clear is that “Turning a blind eye to Trouble only brings Trouble closer.” Trouble is a compelling story worth reading.  

As I was reading this novel, I also happened to be reading Tim Keller’s Songs of Jesus, a daily devotional on the Psalms. Psalm 71:20-21 fits with the theme of trouble:  “Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again, from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. You will increase my honor and comfort me once more.”  

Keller writes, “The psalmist trusts God’s sovereign wisdom and love, even when he has sent bitter trouble into his life. He knows that in the end everything that happens is for the ultimate purpose of restoring our lives—by deepening the love, wisdom, and joy of our spiritual life and by eventually resurrecting our bodies in the new world, wiped clean of all death and darkness (Romans 8:18-25). Indeed, then, everything is needful that he sends; nothing can be needful that he withholds.”  I confess I had to sit with this awhile and pray for God to help me believe this as true. 

But then I was reminded that in preparing his disciples for his departure, Jesus himself said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). How has Jesus overcome the world? When we say we believe “on the third day he rose from the dead” we are saying that Jesus has overcome the world through his resurrection from the dead. Jesus has conquered our greatest human problem and given us new life in his Spirit.  

Romans 8:37-39 are among my favorite verses and ones I like to use a lot in both pastoral care and at memorial services as well as claim for myself and family: “No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  

In this world, we will face a lot of trouble. But nothing—absolutely nothing—can separate us from God’s love because Jesus has overcome our ultimate problems of sin and death in his resurrection. Even now, Jesus is the risen, ascended, and reigning King of the universe and of our lives. By the power of his Spirit, he is with us whatever trouble may come our way. 

In his book Trouble, Schmidt did not have a neat and tidy ending, which I appreciated. Life is filled with unpredictability and uncertainty about the future. Even as the main character Henry looks ahead not knowing what is going to happen to his family, his friends, or his community, he gains a new understanding, a knowing he had not had before: “The world is Trouble. . . and Grace. That is all there is.” 

When I read those words I had to stop because I too knew that was so true. After dealing with a worldwide pandemic for two years, watching the news of war in Ukraine and violence in so many places around the world, and whatever personal challenges of loss may have come our way, I think we all know it’s true. “The world is Trouble”, and it’s never easy to deal with trouble, and none of us is superhuman and beyond struggle.  

But it’s not only trouble. “The world is Trouble…and Grace. That is all there is.” But we are to believe and live the truth of God’s unconditional love and amazing grace in Jesus. We really can cling to the profound truth that God’s grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9-11) whatever trouble comes our way. Jesus has accomplished for us what we could never accomplish on our own. And his grace is available to help and strengthen us in every circumstances we find ourselves. This is his promise, and he is always faithful. Always.