Cords of Affliction

He does not withdraw his eyes from the righteous, but with kings on the throne he sets them forever, and they are exalted. And if they are bound in chains and caught in the cords of affliction, then he declares to them their work and their transgressions, that they are behaving arrogantly.
Job 36:7–9
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Cords of Affliction
Very few people enjoy pain and affliction. We spend a great deal of time in fact trying to avoid it. Yet the “chains” and “cords of affliction” still come to God’s people.  We live in a fallen and broken world, surrounded by fallen and broken people. Affliction is all around.  We do ourselves no service complaining about our troubles, as if we somehow should not have them because we are children of God. Jesus reminds us of this when He says, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19). In other words, we don’t suffer the cords of affliction despite of the fact that we are Christians, we suffer precisely because we are Christians. And lest we forget, pain and affliction can be useful. Why don’t you leave your hand on the hot stove? Because the pain makes you recoil. Likewise, when we stray from God’s path, often time the chains we gather weigh on us causing us to seek God and His forgiveness, to seek a release from the bondage (Isiah 61:1). The cords of affliction expose our human frailty and inability to free ourselves. They focus our sight upon the cross and Christ crucified in order that we might see our salvation and that He alone may free us. And in faith we can sing with the psalmist, “The Lord is righteous; he has cut the cords of the wicked” (Psalm 129:4).