Remember, Paul is still talking about the problem with his flesh which he holds to be dead because of sin.

The creation (including Paul's body and everyone else's body) was subjected to frustration, to futility. Isn't this what Paul was complaining about? "I'm trying to do good but there is this dead animal I am dragging around!"

It was not the choice of the material creation to be subjected to thorns, thistles, painful childbirth, death. God put this curse on it.

Why did God curse the material creation? God so cursed it with the hope that one day He could deliver it from the chains of decay and corruption and bring it into the freedom of living that is part of the glory of the children of God.

If we could but see ourselves! We are a mess. We are bound by gravity, for one thing. Even the birds are better off in this respect.

Did you ever wish you could fly and not need tons of gasoline to get you off the ground?

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to swim through the ocean like a whale and greet the sunrise from the middle of the Pacific?

Did you ever imagine how wonderful it would be to explore the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean or the tops of the Himalayas without feeling the cold?

One time I was looking at a picture of an Icelandic hut, sitting all alone in the snow in Iceland. Inside the hut the family was listening to "Silent Night, Holy Night." What an enchanting sight. But so cold!

God never meant for His children in their glory to be subject to heat, cold, sickness, gravity, suffocation, weeds, painful childbirth, pain, death, or any of the other calamities of nature. These are not God's idea of a happy environment. The water was made to be walked upon. We have lost the natural faith of the children of God.

Why has God subjected man to such bondages and indignities? Because there is a higher purpose than our pleasure. The higher purpose is that we might learn to resist sin.

Here is one of the great issues facing mankind, particularly the people of our own spoiled generation. Will we accept the fact that the highest good in life is obedience to God and not our own happiness? This issue will increase in emphasis until finally proud human beings are shaking their fist at God and cursing Him because of their pain and frustration. But the righteous will bow their heads and follow the Lord patiently.

God deliberately has placed us in a painful, frustrating situation. Also we were born with an urge to sin and rebel against God. You must remember that while God tempts no person to sin He very easily could have prevented the original sin in the Garden of Eden.

To be continued.