There are times when we read the Scriptures that a special verse speaks to us like no other.
This morning I read Psalm 119:65-72. All eight verses speak wonderfully, into my present life but one verse speaks comparatively louder than the others. It is Verse 71. It is like the surgeon who keeps digging until he finds the bullet. I knocked me out. It says:
“It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes.”
For the Psalmist, it is his distant perspective that sheds light on his affliction and helps him learn and share his good lessons with the rest of us learners. His words are different from mine but they mean the same. He said, “I learned,” and I do mean, “I learned, period.”
The affliction did not go to waste because he learned from it.
Also, of deeper importance is what he learned because he learned a good thing. It would carry him confidently toward his destiny. He learned to keep God’s statutes, which are His rules. Those rules are good because, unlike other lessons, God’s lessons won’t hurt us. They will heal us. Distance from the afflicting event helped the Psalmist see the redemptive qualities in the affliction.
Joseph shared a similar experience from his affliction in Genesis 50:20. Years after his jealous brothers sold him into slavery he learned. Time and distance gave him the grace to get through the affliction as well as the grace to forgive those who afflicted him as he shares his hard-learned lesson. He faces them and says,
“You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”
He could not say it during the affliction and neither can most of us, but the perspective of distance provides the comforting view, to the point of saying that it is good that I was afflicted so that I could learn God’s rules.
And what about Jesus? It was actually good for us that He was afflicted, because only then could each of us say:
At the cross, at the cross,
Where I first saw the light,
And the burdens of my heart rolled away.
It was there, by faith,
I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day.
Was it for crimes that I have done,
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity, grace unknown,
And love beyond degree.
It is good that I was afflicted, that I may learn His statutes.
Life Step Ministries 