Living On…
Life is such a whirlwind of dreams, emotions, circumstances and interactions.
Everything could be a joke, anything could be a trigger. The things we walk though, the inhumanity we experience.
We can journey within a moment from tears of pain to laughs of pure joy. It’s the power invested in us, for we are carriers of souls. I know it can be hard sometimes. Like, really, hard. How am I to steward my soul well!? Me, mixed up in a world that screams so many opportunities, mishaps, temptations and distractions all functioning as low-hanging fruit to entice my weary and thirsty soul. How does one steward the heart and soul that King Jesus so graciously gifted us with? Well, I am no theologian and all I have is my take, to contribute to a sea of opinions and passionate attempts to understand life’s most daunting mysteries.
But my takeaway lately in the midst of some unknowns and uniwished difficulties has been the idea of processing well and living with a forward mentality. You and I both know we cannot answer some of these really difficult and deep questions. We cannot fully explain pain or sovereignty, free will and somehow figure out how God functions and works. We can give it a shot, we can gain some insight in the process and we can grow in our love for gleaning and resting and hoping in the wonders of God. Defending our faith with sound apologetics is good and right. But we will always end up slightly frustrated, with our limited results from our quest for big answers to really tough questions. I think God understands our need to take time to heal… I do not think God has ever asked, or expected you and me to immediately respond to our suffering or questions with instant joy and assumed trust. Faith was built to be strong enough and beautiful enough to WONDER and CRY and PROCESS and HEAL. Living victoriously is not a robotic decision, it is a byproduct of a deep, intimate, honest and willing faith in Jesus. There is something right, okay, and possibly beautiful in being honest with God about where we are in processing our pain. Heck, He understands. He knows. God, physically stepped down into the story of man and humanity’s suffering and took on a cross that bore all of our imperfections and doubts and sin that we would see and testify to the depths of His love and His commitment to be intimate and real with us. This is the qualifying and magnificent distinction of the Gospel: God came to us, God died for us, God fought for us, and God won for us. Not that we would boast in ourselves, but rather respond to His radical act of Grace & Power with faith, devotion, and ultimate surrender. And that means we are not only beckoned, but we are called to hand over our most difficult questions and worst of sorrows to the work and promise of Jesus. To process is to trust. To trust is to have faith, To have faith is to live.
Here’s to living on.
