“Who would not be willing to have a bone out of joint , so that he might have a sight of God?” (Watson 26)
‘Afflictions’ (read ‘harm’) need to come to those who love God as much as to anyone else. This is a weird thought; shouldn’t it be the case that if God is ‘on your side’, you develop some kind of immunity or invulnerability to harm? At least, you might expect that things wouldn’t hurt as much because you’re being shielded somehow, or at least comforted by the thought that heaven cares… But if you actually read the Bible, it seems otherwise: God allows, permits, sends the trouble.
If that is so and there are no exemptions to being harmed, what advantage is there in putting your trust in God? In a word, meaning. Sometimes you will get to see the purpose of your pain and the good that arises. But even when you don’t, your suffering is not meaningless. Of course there is still the potential to disengage and ‘miss’ what is really going on but, fortunately, its working is independent of our attention. Jesus’s close friend Peter writing to the early church says “for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honour.” (1 Peter 1:6-7) and this idea is found throughout the Bible. In Genesis, Joseph addresses his brothers who betrayed him, acknowledging both the necessity of the personal harm they did him and the material good which came from it: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.” (Genesis 50:20)
“Who would not be willing to have a bone out of joint, so that he might have a sight of God?”
The Psalmist says “It is good for me that I was humbled, so that I might learn your statutes.” (Psalm 119:71) basically saying to God – ‘Getting hurt shut me up, woke me up and brought me low enough to care about learning your ways’; this writer is thankful because they see that they wouldn’t have met with God any other way. They stood in their own way so to speak. And this brings us to the key quote above. Watson cites the story of Jacob fighting the Angel of the Lord from Genesis 32. “Jacob wrestled with the angel and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint. This was sad; but God turned it to good, for there he saw God’s face.” Hence Watson’s rhetoric, “Who would not be willing to have a bone out of joint , so that he might have a sight of God?”
That is the contrast – the evil of a broken hip versus the pay-off of seeing the face of the God who made you. Whatever your level of subscription to the faith, the sense of this equation is plain: the harm is real, is painful, is enduring BUT the reward is sublime.