A Bowl of Cherries

"Life is a bowl of cherries," they say. You know ... everything is beautiful, sweet, warm ... in some other parallel universe, of course, because it's clearly not in our reality. Erma Bombeck wrote a book titled, "If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?" ... because "a bowl of cherries" is not our experience in life. This is why a sustainable worldview must address the pits before it ever deals with the cherries. And Scripture does an amazing job of it.

Almost as soon as God declares "It was very good" over Creation (Gen 1:31), we run into a broken world where sin enters and death because of it (Gen 3:17). Solomon's Ecclesiastes is full of declarations of the difficulties of life, beginning with "Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity" (Eccl 1:2). David declares, "YHWH is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit" (Psa 34:18). Jesus came as a "man of sorrows" (Isa 53:3) who has "borne our griefs and carried our sorrows" (Isa 53:4). The traditional symbol of Christianity is the cross ... suffering. Yet, Paul writes, "... we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5:3-5). James writes, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing" (James 1:2-4). These aren't just "buck up and hold on" texts. They're "positive outcome" passages that assure us that, yes, there is suffering, but it's for the best.

If God is sovereign (and He is) and He always accomplishes the best (and He does), it alters our existence in the worst of times. We can "count it all joy" (I like the King James phrase) when we encounter trials because, like Joseph told his brothers, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Gen 50:20). The enemies of God mean evil against us ... "but God." God doesn't mean it to be tolerated or endured. He means it for good. A "life is a bowl of cherries" outlook is a cheerful lie that ultimately can't stand up to reality. "God means it for good" is the truth that allows us to stand in the fire without getting burned and end up better off for it.