Followers Under Stress
For decades, the technology of finger follower-actuated valves, also known as poppet fingering, has brought big power to high-revving racing and aircraft engines. It was a natural fit in sport bike engines in the 1980s, and it’s making headlines again in the upcoming C8 Corvette Z06 engine. In the 991-generation Porsche 911 GT3, it allowed the 4.0-liter flat-six to scream to 9,000 RPM.
In a traditional overhead-cam setup, a cam lobe acts on a valve cup tappet, which in turn acts on the valve. But with poppet fingering, a cam lobe presses against an oscillating, finger-shaped lever, which then presses on the valve. By offsetting the valve from the cam base, the finger follower acts as a lever. A leveraging ratio is created, and the valve load is increased - safely.
In other words, by bearing the pressure from the cam, that finger follower can actually create an increase in engine speed, and power.
This is great news for the valve. The finger follower, though, gets knocked around all day. If it could talk, it would complain. Unlike, say, a flywheel, a finger follower has no idea how much power it’s helping to generate. It can’t see the big picture.
It was the same with the writer of Psalm 44, who wrote, “Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” (v. 22) The author, seeing only his struggle and not its role in God’s grand design, audaciously wrote this about God. Later, the prophet Jeremiah used the same complaint and the same sheep analogy in a request for God to actually kill the people who are causing them strife: “Yet you know me, O Lord; you see me and test my thoughts about you. Drag them off like sheep to be butchered! Set them apart for the day of slaughter!” (Jeremiah 12:3)
Later still, in Romans, Paul applied Psalm 44:22 to his fellow believers. The persecution he faced could be put in the perspective of a divine plan to spread the Gospel to a new audience. Paul didn’t know the details of the divine plan, but that isn’t the point. A person doesn’t have to know God’s plan to have peace. They only have to know God.
To drive this point home, Paul continued with these famous words: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39)
The author of Psalm 44 lived and died without knowing how their pain would be used to inspire Roman believers through the words of Paul, and billions of Christ-followers in the 2,000 years since. They probably never saw the purpose to their pain.
You may not, either. If you focus on yourself and your woes, anything around you feels like injustice against you. Think back to the finger followers. Is there just one in an engine, living in torment and doing all of the work? No. There is one for every valve. Each follower has a team around it, going through the same thing.
The same is true for Christ-followers, who can gain a better understanding of the role pain plays in their life if they’re empathetic toward the pain of people around them, and if they trust in the God who turns that pain into progress.
If this is hard to grasp, consider yourself human. Then read Romans 8, and find a fellow follower to talk to about it. The purpose of your pain could be such a conversation with a person who needs it.
