A song came on the radio while I was driving the other day and some of the lyrics really stuck with me and got me thinking.
Too often I sit and think about our world and how sad it makes me. I hurt for everyone. I hurt for the people who are suffering. I hurt for the children stuck in slavey. I hurt for the women forced into prostitution. I hurt for those who don’t know the love of Christ.
I catch myself saying ‘why can’t we all just get along’ on a daily basis. It’s beyond me why people can’t just be nice.
Our world has become so ‘me’ oriented that we have a hard time even seeing the light because it’s so foggy and clouded by our own actions.
In life we will all have struggles.
We will face hardship and we will know pain and suffering. We will face death and understand loss. We will feel angry and hurt, overwhelmed and lost. There is darkness in our world. However, God’s grace shines much brighter than even the darkest of days. After all, there must be some darkness in order to see the light. The difference here is whether we are in the darkness or the fog.
Everyone needs some darkness in their lives. I know that sounds terrible but it’s true. If everything was always perfect then why would we ever need God? Why would we need to lean on Him or trust Him if we can do everything ourselves and life is always good?
Every now and then we need this darkness. It is through this darkness that God’s light shines. He yearns for us to seek Him; to trust in Him and have faith that He will always provide. God will give us many different challenges in life. If He didn’t, wouldn’t it be harder to trust in Him, to grow in Him and to lean on Him? God promises to give us strength to meet those challenges, but not eliminate them. God allows this darkness to come to give us a greater gift.
We NEED to feel hurt.
We NEED to feel sad.
If we don’t know the depth of pain we would never be able to fully understand the heights of joy.
This is where God’s glory truly exists; through pain. To feel like the world is crashing down, and just when you think you can’t take any more you realize that God’s hands have been holding you the whole time. He is right there with us through every battle. He is by our side. He never leaves us, the question is, do we leave Him? Do we leave that darkness where we hit rock bottom, only to find out He is the rock at the bottom, in exchange for cloudiness and fog? God creates the darkness. We create the fog. The fog rolls in when we think we can do all things through ourselves.
As human beings it is only natural for us to want answers to everything. As a society we are always seeking how to make something bigger or better. We strive to be the best at everything. Seeking promotions at work, the highest grades and degrees a good education can provide, the ‘perfect body,’ the list could go on… God is on the backburner because our lives have become too busy trying to achieve only what is within our world, only what our earthly bodies can produce. The more we seek earthly possessions the less satisfied we become. If you shoot for this world that is all you will ever get. We have started to rely on ‘stuff’ instead of God's love to find happiness. I suppose that is only natural when every message society is telling you that you need to have this car, look a certain way, own this house, and carry that purse.
Little by little the fog rolls in when we seek happiness in anything that is not eternal.
We live in a finite world.
None of this stuff will come with us when we are called home.
Here is the beauty of this: Our world isn’t broken. God is here. He never left. We are the ones that left Him. If we all took just a minute to look at ourselves, our lives and made an honest effort to become better, too focus on eternity, then we could fix those pieces that were bent and make them straight.
We could all learn to love again. ..
