How would you cope?

Currently I am reading a book called “Outpost of Occupation”, written by Barry Turner. It shows how the Channel Islands survived Nazi rule during the years 1940 to 1945. It was of particular interest to me because I was born in Guernsey.

It is shocking to read of the terrible deprivation that those in the Islands faced during the war, especially after D-Day, when mainland France was cut off and could no longer supply any resources either to the German garrison or to the islanders. Today we take it for granted that essentials and even luxuries will be freely available. Yet only a few generations ago there were people just like us, people whose families we may have known, for whom utter starvation was often only days away. It is more painful still to read of all the crises of conscience that went with the situation – the moral dilemmas that faced people during those desperate days. Even doing a basic kindness could mean arrest and death for both the helper and the one helped.

Yes, there is so much that we take for granted. We can ask many questions: how would we react? How would we survive? Would it make or break our characters? Would we help others or push them aside in a desperate bid for self-preservation? These are things that very often we can never know until we are put to the test.

When the time comes, will we be found sufficient or will we be found wanting? Sometimes we are such a puzzle to ourselves that we simply have to rely on our sovereign God knowing all about us, understanding and being patient with us.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:13-16 NIV

For our part all we can do is fortify ourselves against the day of calamity with a living faith in the Saviour. Beyond that we can only trust that a true sense of values, guided and shaped by God, will see us through in the end.

To encourage us, God offers us Himself as an inspiration. The Lord Jesus Christ had everything when He was with His heavenly Father in glory. He let all of that go, even His dignity and His physical well-being, in order to sacrifice Himself for us and to win for us forgiveness and newness of life. It is very hard to imagine what it cost Him. No ordinary mortal has ever started from such heights and been brought to such depths – and then ascended again!

As we come back to our own situations, often really quite pampered, we can think of our Lord and what He willingly surrendered to make us spiritually rich. We should also remember that our fellow human beings, not far from us, are even now undergoing friction, deprivation, desperate times. Often the reason is not the high-flown politics that the news presenters love to attribute regional conflicts to. On the ground, the cause of conflict may equally likely be a squabble over limited resources.

May God help us to be realistic about who we really are, to appreciate all that we have, to steward it wisely, and to ensure that the world has its fair share. It may well be in our own interests on earth and it will be building up treasures in heaven. Our incentive is that God has no intention of being mean towards you and me in heaven simply because we lived in a rich country on earth. Charles Wesley, the sweet singer of sovereign grace, once wrote these lines:

Thou waitest to be gracious still;

Thou dost with sinners bear,

That, saved, we may Thy goodness feel,

And all Thy grace declare.

Its streams the whole creation reach,

So plenteous is the store,

Enough for all, enough for each,

Enough for evermore.