first watch, then read.
If life is hard at times… join the club, that only makes us normal. We are told that if we just believe, then God He will make all our problems go away, and shown that life is supposed to be easy, but these are lies.
Think….
A child growing up will face many obstacles. Is it better for the parent to intervene and remove them, or to walk with the child, step by step, showing them the way through.
How problems and suffering can be a good thing:
We see what we are made of, God already knows: Picture a spectrum. On one side it reads, “completely coming apart at the seams”, on the other, “peace”. Each trial we face, a needle reveals where we fall on that spectrum. With each new trial, the needle moves, it’s up to us which direction.
It’s usually through some kind of crisis that God screams at us through a loud speaker, “Something’s got to change!”. Ultimately, the only thing we can change, ourselves, is the one thing we don’t want to. What do I need to change?
Our true greatness is seen in adversity. Greatness is born out of suffering and adversity, no one ever rose to greatness by having a comfortable easy life. (Kempis) But so is ruin. The choice is ours.
All of us are searching for answers and truth and what it’s all about. They aren’t found easily, and certainly not in the distractions, the noise, or the those things like pleasure, power and riches. A catalyst to begin the journey, is problems and suffering.
Where Do Our Problems Come From, 3 places:
If we are honest, most of our problems come from ourselves: our choices, our mistakes, our attitudes, and our egos.
Unfortunately, the rest of our problems come from someone else’s choices, mistakes, attitudes, and egos. Some of these we allow, others happen to us by no fault of our own, but often do the most damage.
Disasters, loss, disease, illness and death, these are (mostly) out of our control. God doesn’t cause them, we are free creatures in a free environment: these things are going to happen.
Do I blame God for any of these?
What is the Light?
The light is truth, the light is grace, the light is peace, the light is love, the light is strength, the light is divine wisdom, the light is counsel, the light is infinite, the light is all these things, and so much more, wrapped up in the person we call Jesus Christ.
And this person is eagerly waiting to be in a relationship with us… even at this very moment. Simply by knowing him, do we enter the light, and that’s when the real miracles start happening.
How? Jesus said…
Understand my Words and put them into practice: Do I really know what He said, do I understand it, what He meant, what He is saying to me now? This is step one. Step two is the hard part, the part we don’t like: put it into practice.
Trust in me: If I were in the space shuttle with an entire crew of astronauts, I would trust them to get me into space and back, safely. I certainly couldn’t do it myself, nor would I try. Do I even have half that amount of trust in God?
Imitate me: Christ had nothing but problems, suffering, contradiction, adversity, trials, struggle, mocking, and betrayal from the moment of His birth until His brutal death. How did he handle it? That’s what we should imitate.
The Miraculous Part
We all want the miracle, and miracles do happen. But the miraculous part is not in God zapping our problems away, the miraculous part is in this super-natural light filling our hearts and minds with the tremendous strength and peace to face anything. And i’ve seen it…
I’ve seen it in two parents who lost their 18yo to suicide. They were devastated, but they are a house built in stone.
I’ve seen it in an old woman who had nothing: no family, no money, no house, no hair, no teeth… but she had a smile that could melt a million hearts, more vibrant than a million flowers planted by a million streams.
I’ve seen it in a dear friend who has had nothing but darkness since the day she was born, of no fault of her own. But the darkness, it never overcame her.
And finally, maybe the most important part…
We all have a mountain of problems that we face everyday. There is no victory without a battle, and there is no rest without work. With each new battle, the stronger, the wiser, the braver we become, and the heavier the burden we can bear. But even more importantly, with every battle I face, am I then equipped, to go out and help someone else who is perhaps in the early stages, of that same battle.
peace.