about things that are difficult

1) sometimes they don't make sense :: This is my last week at home here in Fauquier county, VA.  and it has been a rough one for our community.  On Monday, a high school student passed away in a car accident. Last night, a sweet thirteen year old, Sydney, died after battling leukemia for over a year.  When I think about these two tragedies there is very little about them that makes any sense. That isn't how life is supposed to work.  Young kids are supposed to grow up and have dreams and fulfill them and make mistakes and learn.  They are supposed to live.  And so this, these two awful deaths, are painful because they don't make sense.  And I wish, so much, that things like this were just not allowed to happen.  

2) sometimes they make us better :: My dear friend Maria wrote a blog post about the time she made a quick trip to DC a few weeks ago, and in it she says something that I think is really beautiful.  "And it's good to feel a little lost. Because in those times, it's so much easier to be actually dependent on the only true foundation that won't escape." Something common about difficulty, be it big or small, is that it makes us feel uncertain about the motion of our lives; as though we are standing on shaky ground, ready to break.  And this is where the Lord says, "I am a rock".  It makes me think of Noah, how after all those days of difficulty, bearing his fear inside the boat he created, uncertain how it would all play out - how sweet that dry land much have felt under his feet - to bend down and kiss it, to taste the dirt of the Lord's faithfulness and to thank Him that all along was waiting this steady foundation.  

3) sometimes they ask us to hope :: Jesus says that in this world we will have difficulties.  He lays it out a simple as that, like a promise, that we who live in a sinful, broken place will have heartache and sorrow.  This is not something we want.  But it is a guarantee. We are to expect it.  But he asks more of us: that we, knowing full well that life is hard, would have hope.  Though the earth give way, though the mountains crumble to the sea.  "Take heart!" he says.  "For I have overcome the world!"  He has overcome our pain.  He has overcome our sorrow.  And it's hard, really hard, but we are not called to despair.  We are called to weather our storms, to cling to our eternal foundation, and to pray to Him for hope: that we may wait expectantly for a day where every tear is wiped from our eyes and there is nothing more to hope for.