I Keep Looking

I've always found it interesting that pain and suffering are so intrinsically a part of our lives. I mean this in every sense of those two words. Whether its people starving or beaten or grieving or abused, life is full of pain and suffering.

The real thing I find interesting in that is the Believer's response. My faith tells me not to run from pain, not to seek out the easiest path, not to want only the easy and simple things in life. My Bible doesn't tell me, "Do everything you can to do as little as possible, be liked by everyone, and take it easy." Actually, it tells me to work out my salvation with fear and trembling, to be prepared for people to NOT like me (and perhaps hate me), and to seek God's will first and foremost.

I want God's will more than I want an easy life. I know I've said that, but I truly do value the path God has for me more than any path I could come up with for myself. I'm learning to value the hardship, to embrace it and grow in it. And honestly, lately, it hasn't been my hardship that's the issue; its the hardship of those I love, the pain faced by friends and family, watching them have to struggle and reconcile. And that hurts me. I hurt to watch that. Yet at the same time, would I take away any of the joy of knowing God that those hard things bring? Absolutely not. I have to rest in that. I'm a fix-it person, I don't like to sit around and wait, I like to get things go and fix the issue. But life isn't always like that.

Life is hard. I realize I don't know what that word means like some people do. But as my mama says, our hurt is our hurt. It isn't diminished just because someone else is experiencing a different kind of hurt. And those hardships are the result of sin, of believing lies. But you see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. So we have hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

I love in Job, after Job has said, "Look at all these things I've done, how I've lived, yet God isn't answering me or fixing this." God says to him, "Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?...Have you ever given orders to the mourning, or shown the dawn its place...? Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recessed of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you?" I love this part, "Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? From whose womb comes the ice? ...Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? Do you send lightening bolts on their way?...Who endowed the heart with wisdom or gave understanding to the mind? " This goes on and on through Job 38-42. To me, when God asks those questions, He is saying, "You don't know what is going on. You do not have the power in this situation. I know what I am doing. I know the plans I have for you, plans not to harm you, but to give you a hope and a future." That is so beautiful.

Yes, life is hard. Yes, we will suffer and hurt and grieve and sorrow. James tells us that we will face trials and tribulations, events that test our faith. But Job reminds me that God is far more in control than I can imagine. The lightening bolts report to Him and say, "Here we are"! God is in control, He has the plan. Even in the pain and suffering, His plans are to bring me a hope and a future. He has saved me by His Son. I want to trust Him with my life.

This is rambly (not a word, but you get what I mean), and not exactly where I intended to go with it, but it was something of which I needed to be reminded.