Why Am I Troubled?

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside…

Oh really?

If the Lord does all those good things, then why do troubles beset me?

Why do aggravations aggravate? Why parking tickets? Why my macular degeneration, trembling hands and prostrate cancer? Why Microsoft Word? Why doesn’t my scanner scan? Why loud neighborhood teens with boom box radios? Why insomnia? Why inadequate health insurance?

Ok. I’ll admit that my troubles are petty affairs, ripples in a world filled with troubles. Mine don’t stack up to the troubles suffered by most of humanity.

But my troubles are mine.

My toothache hurts more than any other toothache in the history of the world. No one can tell me otherwise!

So, if the Lord is indeed my shepherd, why do I have to undergo so many troubles?

Shouldn’t a child of God live a smooth, peaceful, prosperous life beside those still waters, lying on my back in a green pasture gazing up at fluffy white clouds like fairy castles in the air…

What’s that?

Damn! You’re right. That’s a pasture patty I was laying on! And that’s a fire ant mound I pillowed my head on!

What kind of Shepherd is this who would lead me into a place like this?

I want to complain to the management.

I want to know why, if Christ is indeed the Good Shepherd, why I have to endure so many troubles in this world.

And when I ask this question, a couple of things occur to me; these aren’t answers by any means but hints as to why God allows His children (me in particular) to suffer.

My first thought is that some troubles are impersonal and generic; they come about simply because we live in a fallen world that is still falling and hasn’t hit bottom yet. The hurricane forming off our Florida coast this morning has no personal grudge against me. Tree limbs will fall on my roof as well as my neighbors. Churches and bars will both flood. Godly couples have deformed babies just as the ungodly do. War kills sinner and righteous indiscriminately. Forest fires roast bunnies as well as rattlesnakes.

Man that is born of woman is few of days and full of troubles.

That’s just the nature of the world.

Sheep in the pasture mean pasture patties on the ground.

Nothing unusual about it.

Some troubles I generate myself. Right now I’m frustrated about trying to scan in 77 old sepia photographs for my fire history book. I curse and hit the edge of my desk and call the scanner nasty names… Nobody is forcing me to scan in these photos. Nobody compels me to write this book. I’m encountering scanner troubles because of my own choice; the grainy photos go with the territory. My current troubles come with the job…. Although it might help for me to read the instruction manual.

When I chose a course of action, then I have also chosen the troubles that go with that course of action.

Other troubles come because evil exists, because an evil one exists. It lurked in the parking garage yesterday just waiting for the meter to click so it could slap that $15 ticket on Ginny’s windshield. And the retirement seminar (which she found of little help) ran overtime just long enough for the evil one to strike.

That may not be the best example of evil at work in the world, but it’s the example fresh in my mind this morning.

Of course, everyone knows that sin spawns trouble. Here in Jacksonville our murder rate climbs daily. Groups of people stand on street corners when a car drives by and opens fire spraying the group and nearby houses with bullets. We’ve had several cases of children killed in their own beds or while reading library books when stray bullets came through the walls of their homes.

Unintended victims of the local drug trade.

Sin spawns trouble, anguish, sorrow, grief. More sin.

That’s what happens to other people. Deep in my heart, I’m convinced that my own sins are petty habits which are nobody else’s business. They are my pets. Never cause any trouble at all.

My sins are housebroken.

Familiar.

Mine.

In fact, my sins are hardly sins at all, let’s just call them minor character flaws. Actually, I’d only call them little peccadilloes if I could spell that word.

I'm not a dirty old man, just a vigorous senior mature gentleman with certain youthful interests.

Right?

Deep in my heart, I hardly think I need a Savior at all because I’m such a nice guy; but I let Christ save me because that’s what nice guys do. Only sinners and hypocrites actually need a Savior dying on a cross, my own peccadilloes don’t call for such drastic rescue measures as that…

Am I the only Christian to think like that?

I mean for God to come to earth, die on a cross, and rise from death because of me: what I am, what I’ve done, what I’m still doing. Really, I ask you!. He need not have gone to all that bother; my sins are not that serious, I’m not as bad as all that — Am I?

Humm. Wrong question there.

I think there is another reason the Good Shepherd lets troubles trouble me.

He once said that He has other sheep which are not of this fold.

He expects us 99 comfortable ones to reach out to those other sheep, to testify concerning Him. And they won’t believe us unless we are undergoing the same sort of troubles they are.

Maybe I just suspicious, but when some guy with razor-cut hair wearing a Rolex, smiling with even teeth, shooting his cuffs, with a Lexus or BMW parked outside — when such a guy begins to tell me about Jeeezsus, I write him off.

Sure he can jabber about the peace of God and the still waters and the green pastures. Why not, he probably got laid last night too.

No wonder, he’s so pleased about his relationship to God.

I write him off because he does not live in my world. He hasn’t a clue about my angst and anguish and inner turmoil.

Whoa! I’m being judgmental here. That polished preacher may very well be listened to by people who would never pay attention to a word I say. He has his own Lord. Who am I to judge another’s servant?

But here’s another guy — a guy who’s been hit by life’s truck, who is wounded and bleeding and dirty and hurt…

When that guy glows with the love of Jesus, when he extols this Good Shepherd, the Lamb of God slain from before the foundations of the world, who gave His life for the sheep — Well, just maybe he has something there.

I’m inclined to listen to him because he’s suffered the same sort of thing I have.

Maybe the Good Shepherd lets us be troubled so we can be His voice to a suffering world, so that other lost sheep can recognize the ring of truth in what we say about Him.

Sometimes I suspect that we suffer trouble because we have the privilege of being Christ’s spokesmen.

We are ambassadors for Christ and our troubles are our credentials.

What an incredible blessing!

What an honor.

My sheep hear my voice, He said.

“A stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers,” He said.