Living with Problems and Being at Peace

Isaiah 49: 1 – 7
1/20/2008

              We cannot avoid living with problems. But we can trust God and rely on him as a servant relies upon his master. And though we will still go through upsetting things, over the long haul, we will know peace.

Living with Problems and Being at Peace

            A survey released last year by the Barna research group compared the views, behaviors and attitudes of, on the one hand, atheists and agnostics, which collectively the survey identified as a “no-faith” group, with, on the other hand, those who actively participate in the Christian faith.

            In fairness, we should acknowledge that atheists and agnostics are not identical. An atheist is someone who does not believe in God, period. An agnostic is someone who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God. Still, although agnostics leave room for the possible existence of God, many lean toward the conclusion that there isn’t a God. And for purposes of the survey, Barna lumped with the atheists only those agnostics who said they had no faith.

            In terms of numbers, the no-faith segment represents a relatively small slice of the adult population, about 9 percent. But since the nation includes 220 million adults, that means about 20 million people say they have no faith.

            There is some common ground between the no-faith-ers and active faith-ers, the survey says. Both groups think of themselves as good citizens, as loyal and reliable individuals, and as putting their families first. Both groups admit to experiencing personal difficulties with similar frequency.

            Some of the differences, however, are striking. In general, no-faith Americans are less likely than active-faith Americans to be registered to vote (78 percent vs. 89 percent) or to describe themselves as “active in the community” (41 percent vs. 68 percent), but more likely to adapt easily to change (81 percent vs. 66 percent) and be into new technology (64 percent vs. 52 percent).  

            There are a number of other interesting findings as well, but here is one that is quite significant: When respondents were asked whether they perceived themselves as being “at peace,” 67 percent of the no-faith adults said they were while 90 percent of the active-faith adults declared themselves at peace.

            That finding is noteworthy because both groups acknowledged having about the same number and kind of personal difficulties. For example, 11 percent of the no-faith group and 10 percent of the active-faith group admitted to being in serious debt. Thirteen percent of the former and 12 percent of latter acknowledged dealing with a personal addiction. And when it comes to trying to find a few good friends, about four out of every 10 in both groups said it was a problem.

            So if both no-faith-ers and active-faith-ers have about the same number and kind of personal troubles, how come more Christians are able to declare themselves at peace?

The servant’s song

            Our Old Testament reading today provides some insight into that. The passage is sometimes described as a “servant song,” one of four such special passages to be found in Isaiah. Specifically, it refers to an unnamed servant of God. In that context, the servant is not like household help, such as a butler or a maid, or even like a slave in the field. As used here, the word “servant” does imply that the person involved belongs to someone else, but the focus is not upon mere subordination. Rather, it is upon the kind of relationship that exists between the servant and the master. The servant does the will of the master, but the servant also has a claim upon the master, relying on the master to keep and stand by the servant and provide what the servant needs. The master is the source of hope for the servant.

            The identity of the servant in this passage is a matter of debate among biblical scholars, but in terms of our hearing the message of the passage, it is not necessary that we decide who the servant is. It is enough that we recognize that the servant is one called to act as an agent on God’s behalf. And since we, too, are called by God to act on God’s behalf, the passage can reflect something of our mission as well.

Peace, despite a lack of success

            Speaking of mission, however, notice a comment the servant makes in verse 4: “But I said, ‘I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity ....’”

            Wow. In the midst of describing his call from God and even mentioning God’s promise that God would be glorified through him, the servant pauses to say that so far, his work on behalf of the Lord has been a colossal failure. Talk about troubles! Imagine that you know God wants you to work at something, and you do so with all your heart, but see little or no progress and nothing changing for the better despite your faithful efforts.

            That was the situation of this servant, yet what he says next is not a statement of frustration or anger or discouragement. Instead, he says, “yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God.” In other words he is saying, “All my efforts have amounted to exactly nothing, but the meaning and inner tranquility of my life come not from success at my work, but from my master, the Lord God. He is my reason to continue to serve.”

            It is the Master, you see, who makes it possible for the servant to continue without success but still be at peace. Likewise, it is our Divine Master who makes it possible for us to face the problems of life without being devastated by them.

Peace, despite unsolvable problems

            Now this is not some new discovery. This servant in the Old Testament discovered it centuries ago, and people down through the ages since have told of its reality in their personal experience.

            But speaking of experience, one of the most surprising and, in some ways, most disheartening discoveries I’ve made as a grown-up is that there are some problems for which there are no solutions in this life.

            That was not what I expected growing up. I remember watching TV series where, in the course of one episode, the hero would fall in love, but then something would happen to the loved one. She’d die or decide to leave to confront her past or turn out to be a bad guy. The hero would be brokenhearted at the end of the show, but by the next episode, he had somehow managed to re-gather his pluck, pull himself together, and go on basically unaffected to confront more bad guys. The problem of the broken heart was solved by time or courage, or new script writers, or whatever.

            But even leaving the make-believe world of television, in the real world, I heard about people with alcohol addictions or mental illness or the inability to read or crushing poverty or delinquent kids. I’d hear, “Yes, those are tough problems, but there is help.” And there are 12-step programs, support groups, treatment programs, parenting training, medicine, counseling, government funding, etc. — something somewhere that can address and solve life’s problems. When I became an adult, however, I found out that those claims were correct only sometimes. For people with little money, there are far fewer resources available, but even the well-off find some problems just defy solution. Some problems we just have to live through, or live with.

Learning from experience with the Master

            That’s something most of us learn from experience eventually, but we who serve the Lord also learn something else from experience, and that is that problems, even unsolvable ones, are not the last word.

            Consider the testimony from the old spiritual, “There Is a Balm in Gilead.” That song was born among the plantation slaves in the American South, an oppressed people with no freedom. But listen to what that song says:

Sometimes I feel discouraged, and think my work’s in vain.

But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole;

there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.

            James H. Cone, professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York, has written this about the music of slaves:

Hope, in the black spirituals, is not a denial of history. Black hope accepts history, but believes that the historical is in motion, moving toward a divine fulfillment. It is the belief that things can be radically otherwise than they are: that reality is not fixed, but is moving in the direction of human liberation.

            Now that’s a kind of intellectual way to explain the feeling behind spirituals like “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” but the song says it more simply: “Sometimes I feel discouraged, and think my work’s in vain. But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.”

            One pastor tells of hearing that same testimony in even simpler terms when visiting a homebound member of the parish. This woman was almost 90, and had a lot of pain from arthritis. She also had a host of other medical problems, and those were in addition to the normal cares of life most of us have. She and the pastor talked together about some of those problems, but as the pastor was getting ready to leave at the end of his visit, the woman said, “I give my burdens to the Lord, and he gives me peace.”

            That kind of testimony comes not out of some doctrine book that tells us that when we serve the Lord we find inner peace. It comes from experience. That woman was speaking with the voice of experience. Likewise it was because of their own experience that so many of the active-faith Christians were able to tell the Barna surveyors that they were at peace.

            And I invite you to experience that peace, too. We cannot avoid living with problems. But we can trust God and rely on him as a servant relies upon his master. And though we will still go through upsetting things, over the long haul, we will know peace.