When Suffering Links to Sin

When Suffering Links to Sin
Psalm 38

A friend of mine recently gave me a moving description of the Alcoholics Anonymous group to which he belongs. People go to meetings because they are desperate. They know they cannot kick their habit on their own. It’s more like a disease. They know they need God’s help, and they know that without it they are doomed. Some of them will find that help and will find spectacular deliverance. Some will not. I write a few weeks after the death of a great singer, Amy Winehouse, who made two great albums; in her first and biggest hit, she sang, “They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, ‘No, no, no.’” She never managed to escape the effects of her addictions and died at twenty-seven. Alcoholics eventually realize that they come to the meetings as people responsible both for the mess they have gotten into and for the wrong they have done to other people in getting into that mess, and that they come as people who are simply in deep trouble. They need to repent and accept responsibility for their behavior, but that is not enough; they need help. They need assistance from outside in order to get out of the trouble they are in, but that is not enough; they need to own their responsibility for where they are...