Posted by Abbey Thangiah • Oct 4, 2022
Pastor Chris started his sermon stating that Romans 8 is like a sandwich. The verse starts and ends with a blessing but has a lot of verses pertaining to suffering in the middle. The sandwich bread is fine. It is the filling that causes the suffering. Did I mention that I like sandwiches and burgers?
Life is the filling between creation and eternity. We start life and end life as clay. The bread is carefully crafted by the baker with the right amount of flour, yeast and other ingredients based on his secret formula. We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made by our Maker too. During our life, we are called to be faithful to God and serve Him the best we can. He knows that we are not perfect.
Sadly, while going through life, we go through suffering and we fail to see the glory that comes after. We will receive new bodies in heaven. Until then we have to be content with how He has created us and make the best of what we have. I do not know why, but I rejoice in discovering that sick people are mentioned in the Bible, even those who were not healed. I admire Christians who persevered through their sickness without cursing God. For reasons I will never know, God didn’t choose to heal my father but I strongly believed He carried my father through until the day he passed away peacefully. Since his second stroke, it was sad to see him slowly getting paralyzed little by little. From using a walker to a wheelchair to totally bedridden and dependent on my mother alone. During this time, he slowly lost his speech as well. He spent his last years just sleeping on a bed. I couldn’t carry him much due to my slip disc. I felt so useless around him. As a pastor, he had prayed through Jesus’ name and many were healed. He has also witnessed so many miracles in his life and his ministry. I was supposed to die from a disease when I was a baby but God kept me alive till now. I am an answer to my father’s prayers. I sometimes wish that He answered my family’s prayer to heal him, but I am glad that he has a new body and is living in his new mansion by the sea in heaven. He loved to swim.
Back to the sandwich. Both slices of the bread need to be prepared to put the filling in between. Likewise, we must be well prepared for eternity to face what life gives us in between. In the movie directed by Mel Gibson, “Father Stu” tells of a true story of Father Stuart Long a boxer that became a priest but encountered suffering from inclusion body myositis during his ministry until he died at 50. He says “It’s a profound experience, suffering. And the struggles of this disease helped me, and helped others to learn the way that we should have been living all along. It taught me a little humility. It’s taught me dignity and respect for others. Sometimes, with people like me, there is an extreme example. We need things like this to be able to make those changes and make decisions in our lives that are gonna help us to become better people. We become the people that God created us to be when he sent us to this planet.”