Faith: God never makes light of human pain, suffering

Flat tires. I don’t know anyone who enjoys them.

Does anyone enjoy the raucous rumble of tire rubber flapping against the road and your vehicle’s fender wells?

Do you relish the opportunity to make the suddenly crucial decision as to how long to glide your once-smooth-now-loudly-limping ride to a stop? You’re actually faced with more than a few decisions that could well be discussed a bit — but not when you have scant seconds to make them.

It’s clear that you’re stopping but how quickly and where? Safety needs to be paramount, so you want off the road far enough. Nobody enjoys the roar and rocking motion as other perfectly operating crafts fly by feet away in a blur of terrifying wake turbulence.

But you don’t want off the road so far that you bury up to your bumpers in sand or mud or get lost in tumbleweeds. And you’d prefer not to destroy the tire or rim if such hasn’t already happened.

Some flat tire psychology, even PTSD, might be at work. Perhaps some of the multitude of feelings flowing along with your adrenaline-charged blood are due to previous experiences. Do you enjoy berating yourself, maybe yet again, for not conducting a serious inspection of your tire-changing equipment and its location and use? But who thinks that far ahead?

Maybe you now remember the specific gut-wrench that came from a long-ago flat tire experience when you finally had the spare tire on and, as you began lowering the vehicle while your stranded family watched, discovered that your fear was more than theoretical. The spare was headed to the ground. All the way. About as flat as the tire you’d taken off. Time for Plan B. And that was what exactly?

No, I can’t think of many lovely memories connected with flat tires and automotive marooning. But I do think of a lesson or two from it, and, not least, I find it pushing me toward some perspective.

Flat tires happen in this fallen world. Sometimes we drive our lives into places and situations we surely would have been wiser to avoid. Sometimes we just pick up a nail. But living very long at all in this world should produce in anyone who has ever been stranded by trouble a tendency to be merciful toward others presently in trouble.

And perspective matters. Flat tire sorts of problems can be intensely frustrating, and yet most of us can quickly think of much more serious difficulties — even tragedies and suffering and trials so terrible and heartbreaking that we wonder how anyone could survive them.

Without making too much of life’s flat tire problems and much too little of life’s tragedies, it’s true to say that the Lord Jesus was being utterly realistic and covering an incredible range of “tribulation” when he warned his disciples, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33).

That simple statement squares with the reality we see around us in this fallen world — from its annoyances to its heartbreak.

But I think Christ’s is the perfect perspective when, after warning us to expect trouble in the territory, he continues, “But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

If we think the Lord is making light of pain, we certainly don’t know the suffering Savior. And we’ve forgotten some very important nails and a cross.

Curtis Shelburne writes about faith for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at:

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