Rejoice in tribulation

1 Peter 4:12 (NIV) Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

My dog, Elliot, is like many other dogs in that there are some sounds he doesn’t like, and they cause him to be fearful. One of those sounds is the beep from smoke detectors installed in many homes today, including ours. A few weeks ago, the ones in our house began to beep randomly, telling us that the batteries within them were failing. Each time they made a sound, Elliot would find a place to hide where he felt safe or jump onto one of our laps. Beeping and hiding would continue over the next few days as we replaced batteries, and the units would beep again, letting us know that the new battery was good. By this time, Elliot had learned to be even more afraid of the beeps and became increasingly agitated each time they would sound off.

The problem was seemingly solved after installing new batteries, and we resumed regular home activity. All was well until we purchased a pizza oven, which, as fate would have it, made a very similar beeping sound to the smoke detectors. Elliot was now firmly associating beeps with the onset of fear, and as a member of our family, we began to try and come up with ideas to help him. What happened reminded me of the Pavlovian dog experiments when Pavlov measured the amount of saliva in a dog’s mouth when feeding it meat powder. He then rang a bell during feeding and, over time, removed the food and only rang the bell, which still produced saliva. So, we decided to modify his experiment and try to help our friend, Elliot.

I would cause the pizza oven to beep on purpose, immediately getting Elliot’s attention. Then we would all wiggle our way over to him, hands in the air, making friendly noises before we surrounded him with arms of love and kisses. We continued to do this until he no longer associated the beeping sound with fear but replaced it with love. Now, when the oven beeps, his attention is still grabbed, but his tail wags because he knows he is about to be loved. The beep is still the same, but his response has changed.

In our scripture verse above, we are instructed to rejoice in our suffering. By human reasoning, this makes no sense because suffering is not an event to be celebrated. When we suffer for the cause of Christ, it has many purposes; the chief among those is to bring us closer to him. By analogy, much like Elliot had to perceive beeps differently, we must also change our perspective on suffering. What if we were to view difficult periods as opportunities for Jesus to wiggle himself over to us, wrapping his arms of love around us? What if, instead of being filled with fear, we are consumed with the expectation that Jesus will reveal a deeper depth of himself to us? This is how we rejoice in suffering; we reframe it. We expect Jesus to show up in our situation, giving us yet another testimony and reason to trust him even more.

Insight

Dealing with the fears and anxieties of tribulations can often be helped by simply changing our perspective.