During recent storms (or threats of storms), I found myself looking at the weather app on my phone several times a day. Knowing that my sons were scheduled to have soccer practice that evening, I would check the predictions of bad weather even though I saw only blue skies and innocent-looking, white wisps of clouds above. On the radar, I saw our fair city sitting clear as a bell in the middle of our state. Nothing to fear, right? Then I would zoom out on the map and see ominous, swirling reds and yellows and menacing blobs of green. These storms were crowding around us, just out of view. That visual was a perfect representation of 2020. Destruction seems to be crouching at the door, waiting to pounce.
At the grocery store today, I found myself singing a hymn I hadn’t sung or even thought of in years. (This is one advantage of wearing masks in public—I can sing or whisper to myself but no one knows!) I was singing the song “Farther Along” as I picked out my produce and chose the right bag of shredded cheese. I was singing “Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine…” while I waited on my deli turkey to get sliced. I was telling myself, “Farther along, we’ll understand why.” And I needed this hymn today. Because of my faith, I know those spinning blobs of scariness swirling around me are temporary, but that doesn’t always make me feel less scared.
The history and authorship of the hymn “Farther Along” is uncertain. Some attribute the lyrics to a preacher named W.A. Fletcher, a man who allegedly wrote it while traveling in the Indian Territories in 1911. Apparently, he was sad that he was away from home for the birth of his first child. Whether the story is true or not, you can imagine Mr. Fletcher, sitting lonely and discouraged on a train, trying to cheer himself up. He was attempting to remind himself that there was a greater purpose for struggles and a reward waiting for him after all his “toils of the road.”
I need this kind of reminder, too. I need to know that what I see as unfair or illogical or frightening will make sense eventually. Over the more than 100 years since its first publication, there were some who objected to the chorus of the song. They took offense at the notion that “we’ll understand it all, by and by,” as if we would ultimately know everything that God knows when we get to heaven. But I think there’s a difference between knowing what God knows (just typing those words might make my brain explode) and understanding why. Maybe we don’t have to get all the way to heaven’s pearly gates to understand why the wicked sometimes prosper and the good are liable to be oppressed.
The Scriptures hold plenty of clues as to what suffering is for. The Apostle Paul suffered more than I’m sure I ever will, and he comforted others with these words: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8) So if you’re in the midst of suffering, comfort yourself with the promises of future glory. If you’re in that “clear as a bell” zone of the weather map with only sunny skies as far as the eye can see, bolster your faith with Paul’s words like a team filling sandbags before a hurricane. Then cheer up, my brother, and live in the sunshine.
