This is my latest 'Thought for the Week,' which is about to appear in the Lynn News. Slightly cheating, as adapted from a much longer post ('Facing Hard Things') from a few months back!
In other news, if you've missed it, I'm writing for the Association of Christian Writers now too, on the 18th of each month. If you've missed those posts and want to read them, they can be found here:
http://morethanwriters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/what-do-running-and-writing-have.html?m=1
http://morethanwriters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/nofilter-by-georgina-tennant.html?m=1
http://morethanwriters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-quest-for-words-by-georgie-tennant.html?m=1
Anyway... The 'Thought'. Enjoy and thanks, as always, for reading!...
All of us, at some point in life, will face hard things. And by hard, I mean life-sapping, crushing, painful-beyond-imagining things. At these times, we can look around at others, feeling bitter that life’s cruel lottery has dealt us this hand and others, one that makes much better reading on Facebook. I faced a hard thing, when my daughter, Grace, was still born at 25 weeks of pregnancy. The road I’ve walked since has been one of doubt, hesitancy, small steps, questions, moving forwards, backwards and forwards again, to a place of fragile healing.
Something I have learned to cling to, to light my path through raging storms is that God is still God, He’s still good and He loves me. These are the first certainties that go when trouble strikes. “How could God…?” is the first question we ask. I’ve read my share of books on the subject (I recommend Philip Yancey’s “Disappointment with God” and Jeff Lucas’ “Faith in the Fog”). None of them answer the question fully. They can’t. Life and God will remain a mystery this side of eternity. What I’ve settled on is this: we live in a fallen and decaying world. Bad things happen because of this. They are not orchestrated by a cruel God, arbitrarily doling out happiness to one, misery to another. They just happen. Sometimes God intervenes to change things. Sometimes He doesn’t. What he does do, is grieve with me, walk beside me, count my tears, hear my soul-wrenching questions and doubts, comfort me like a mother and give me hope that, whatever happens, one, final day, it will all be more okay than I could even begin to imagine here and now. When I take “God how could you…?” out of the equation, my path through the storm is lit in a way that it was not before.
Storms will come and go. We will all face difficult days and painful times. But, from lessons learned through hard experiences, I can trust that my anchor will hold through them. I know that, somehow or other, my God will guide me through. I resonate with the new-testament writer, who expressed his confidence that he would be “hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair…struck down but not destroyed.” I know this has been (and is still) true for me and I pray that many others will find the value of clinging to a God who loves them, as the breakers roll.
In other news, if you've missed it, I'm writing for the Association of Christian Writers now too, on the 18th of each month. If you've missed those posts and want to read them, they can be found here:
http://morethanwriters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/what-do-running-and-writing-have.html?m=1
http://morethanwriters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/nofilter-by-georgina-tennant.html?m=1
http://morethanwriters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-quest-for-words-by-georgie-tennant.html?m=1
Anyway... The 'Thought'. Enjoy and thanks, as always, for reading!...
All of us, at some point in life, will face hard things. And by hard, I mean life-sapping, crushing, painful-beyond-imagining things. At these times, we can look around at others, feeling bitter that life’s cruel lottery has dealt us this hand and others, one that makes much better reading on Facebook. I faced a hard thing, when my daughter, Grace, was still born at 25 weeks of pregnancy. The road I’ve walked since has been one of doubt, hesitancy, small steps, questions, moving forwards, backwards and forwards again, to a place of fragile healing.
Something I have learned to cling to, to light my path through raging storms is that God is still God, He’s still good and He loves me. These are the first certainties that go when trouble strikes. “How could God…?” is the first question we ask. I’ve read my share of books on the subject (I recommend Philip Yancey’s “Disappointment with God” and Jeff Lucas’ “Faith in the Fog”). None of them answer the question fully. They can’t. Life and God will remain a mystery this side of eternity. What I’ve settled on is this: we live in a fallen and decaying world. Bad things happen because of this. They are not orchestrated by a cruel God, arbitrarily doling out happiness to one, misery to another. They just happen. Sometimes God intervenes to change things. Sometimes He doesn’t. What he does do, is grieve with me, walk beside me, count my tears, hear my soul-wrenching questions and doubts, comfort me like a mother and give me hope that, whatever happens, one, final day, it will all be more okay than I could even begin to imagine here and now. When I take “God how could you…?” out of the equation, my path through the storm is lit in a way that it was not before.
Storms will come and go. We will all face difficult days and painful times. But, from lessons learned through hard experiences, I can trust that my anchor will hold through them. I know that, somehow or other, my God will guide me through. I resonate with the new-testament writer, who expressed his confidence that he would be “hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair…struck down but not destroyed.” I know this has been (and is still) true for me and I pray that many others will find the value of clinging to a God who loves them, as the breakers roll.
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