Dear Friends,
I hope this note finds you all well, as we come into football season once again. It’s going to be a bit different for us this year, considering how the colleges are handling the COVID thing. With stadium capacity limits, SEC only playing SEC teams, and so forth, I’m sure there will be some frustrations for the fans. But, we’ll be alright. It’s not true suffering.
There are times of suffering though, and you know the real thing. Have you ever wondered why God allows his people to suffer? It seems like it’s something he could eliminate, but he doesn’t. C.S. Lewis, in his book The Problem of Pain, speaks to this conundrum:
The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
May the Lord’s blessing be upon you this September. And War Eagle!
Roger