Where do you see God? Where do you feel Him most? Where is it that you feel His love fill your heart full of joy? Where does He bring comfort in times of sorrow? Where is it that you begin to think you can feel the vastness of His love? Where is it that tears flow because even when you think you can comprehend how much He loves us, you know you simply can’t? His love is perfect. He loves us infinitely and outlandishly. This week I was picking weeds in the garden of Victory Church Cambodia when I began thinking about the profound love God has for us. Yes, I said picking weeds.
The Lord speaks to me most through His creations. I see Him in beautiful sunrises and sunsets. I see Him on the beach as waves come rolling in. I see Him in beautiful green mountain ranges. I even see Him picking weeds. You see the struggles in our lives have a lot in common with weeds. Some weeds are shallow and can easily be removed. Some weeds have beautiful flowers and you leave them alone. Some weeds are have thorns and you get rid of them as fast as possible. Some weeds have significantly longer roots that disrupt the foundation and it takes work to fix the hole where they once were. Some roots are so deep they can’t be removed and everything in their surroundings must learn to function with them.
Weeds have a lot in common with struggles you see. Some times things come our way and we deal with them and move on to never think about them again. Sometimes struggles bring great revelations and we are forever grateful. Sometimes things happens and we react, learn, and find peace and move on. Some times things happen that rock our world. We have to look these struggles square in the eye and deal with them. These struggles have lasting effects on our life but we learn and grow from them. It takes time and healing but we rebuild and eventually move on. Then sometimes things happen that change us forever. These are struggles that shake us to the core. The struggles that break us. In these times we learn to survive. We adapt. We learn to keep going even when we think we can’t. These struggles stay in our hearts forever. They change our lives forever.
See the thing is we all live in this fantasy world where we often think “someday it will get better.” We are constantly in pursuit of unrealistic hopes and aspirations of happiness. Achieving one goal and looking towards the next. Fixing one problem and preparing for the next, as if we can actually prepare. In Ecclesiastes it tells a story of an older man looking back at life starting from birth until death. He speaks of “life under the sun” as in life on earth. In the end, he concludes that EVERY human endeavor is meaningless without God at the center of one’s life. This means that in every situation we must keep our eyes on the Lord, good or bad. We must have faith in God in BOTH the good and bad times. We must praise God at ALL times. I once heard a pastor say, “the measure of faith is when our lives are falling apart and we CHOOSE the Lord. “ This means no matter how deep the root, no matter how big the hole, we must have faith. We need to be faithful before, during, and after the “weeds” have taken root. We must be faithful, diligent, and excellent at following Jesus before “weeds” take root. So that when the “weeds” take root we continue to have faith in the Lord’s plan. He didn’t promise us a life of happiness. He promised us peace, love, and joy. These are precious gifts from the Lord. Even admist pain, sickness, and death we are capable of having these. We are capable of being unhappy yet full of joy. We are capable of being completely broken yet feeling His peace. This is because of His perfect love. We must choose to have faith in Him. We choose Him because He promised us that one day we will live “beyond the sun” and we will no longer have “weeds” in our lives. We will be made whole because we chose to put Him at the center of our lives at all times. God is good period. His goodness is not determined by our circumstances. He is always with us. We just have to CHOOSE Him in both the good and bad circumstances. We must lean into Him. We must remember He is always good. He is both the promise maker and promise keeper. His promise remains.
When we choose to have faith, God is still good even in our struggles.
What a day it will be to join Him beyond the sun and be made whole.
