Difficulties

"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death works in us, but life in you." 2 Corinthians, verses 7-12. 

It is without equivocation that I can claim suffering as a pandemic for those who play out their lives upon this earth. Suffering can, and does, take on myriad forms in each case, but the truth remains that we as created beings made fallible by our shortcomings are prone to emotional, physical, and spiritual anguish. Whether or not one is saved cannot change this truth, except for the fact that a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and a commitment to his coming kingdom can bring still more pain to our fragile frames. So the question, then, is not whether or not we can avoid trials; the answer is easily an emphatic no. The crux becomes how we choose to confront the inevitability of imperfect circumstances. Do we simply dwell upon what is? Do we raid the nearest book store for ten easy steps to a better life? Or do we recognize the reality of our plight, the context within our dying world, and the power of our ever-present savior? Obviously I would argue the latter. It soon becomes clear that simply restating the hopelessness of a situation won't, in fact, change it; nor will ignoring it altogether. If we look at the manner in which Christ himself confronted pain and trials, the answers become clear. In the garden, as the time of his death approached, he was in prayer, seeking resolution only if it fell within the will of the Father. How much time do we, when faced with half His pain, spend shaking our fists at the heaven, or balled up in tears? We serve a loving and all-powerful God, who is willing and able to give us immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine, and yet we are content with ignoring this in favor of the advice of fallible man or the solace of shared misery. Be strong in the Lord and in His righteousness! His mercies are new each morning! 

Not only do we serve a God who is willing and able to pluck us from the pit of despair, but we are under the care of a God who "works all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his will." Doesn't it seem that we should, in response to tribulation, seek to love Him more and stand more fully in the fullness of His will? And might we recognize that the fullness of His will may at times place us under the influence of trials? Instead of seeking the mere elimination of our circumstances, we should instead rejoice in the perfect will of God. Of course, we are not sadists, so we do not delight in our pain, but in the fact that, through it, we share in the death of our Lord and are "achieving an eternal weight of glory" that eternally puts to shame our trivial issues. 

All in all, what we need is an eternal mindset. Temporal thinking logically leads to the hopelessness of a situation, but an eye trained upon our ultimate destination is skilled to find the work of God in every circumstance. We are called to be people of the kingdom of God, not mere participants in a dying world. So when hard times come, don't dwell, but instead serve, pray, and live within the Grace and Love of an Everlasting God.

Freedom

Today, somewhere on this careening sphere, a tradition was broken. Today, a life was lost. Somewhere on God's green Earth, life was found and clung to, a love was born, and a child scraped his knee. However much we look for life to be replete with the revolutionary, we find it saturated with the satisfactory and ornately ordinary. A complete appreciation of life includes the understanding that those moments which are most abundant are thus those most necessary we enjoy. If anyone desires to truly revolutionize their very being, they must seek to find the hand of God, not only in the happenings of life but in the quiet morning walks and the daily commute. Yet I fear that we may look too hard, and see that which is not there. Like mirages in the desert we see so clearly that which never was, create so thoroughly that which will never be. God's will for our life is not the labyrinthine enigma we sometimes wish it to be, but is instead so simple as to be wrapped up in two laws. Love God, and love others. We flee from sin for the sake of our savior, just as we flee from the shackles of legalism by which we so willingly enslave ourselves and those in our charge. Bearing God's armor we are strong and stand tall, but the constructs of man break the back and cripple the legs. We've mistaken a life avoiding sin for a life well lived. We add emphatically to the holy and immutable Word of the divine Creator, because surely his syntax was inadequate. Christ died to afford us the liberty of the moment, and to save us from the monotony of arbitrary obedience. Until we are motivated more by the love of God than the fear of transgression, life's tedium will only drone on. Release yourself from slavery to man's amendments and be bound to the Good Master. His burden is easy and his yoke is light.

It's Been Too Long

It's amazing to me, as I enter my time as a college student, how polarizing a paradigm shift can be. With merely a change of surrounding and a shaken routine, life as we know it becomes something more liquid than solid, something that measures in all the same ways, yet evades grasp. Relationships take on new light and sour or strengthen. Minds take on new ideas and follow suit. The constant, though, is the Love of our Lord. When all else changes, when all else withers, blooms, grows and shrinks, The Almighty remains I Am. Our feeble recognitions of his overwhelming "Am" may change as we learn, our perspectives on his lofty Justice may change as we experience life, but in this He never moves, except to prod and incite and nudge us closer to his Permanence, his blessed peace. Won't we just cling to the Rock of Our Salvation? Will our generation finally sit in the throne room of Grace and hear the words of our everlasting Creator? If leave college--or any stage of our lives for that matter--having neglected a thorough examination of the will of our Lord and our place within it, the locusts have had a feast upon our wasted years. Contemplate, think, live, love, but in all this know that He is. In the stillness of a dew-sewn morning, He is. In the din of a noon-time lunch hall, he remains the same. So examine yourself, prepare your heart to find something to which it may rightly cling--when we find our Lord.