If Life Were Simple

Don't you wish life were that simple? I do. Have a question about a struggle? Out pops your guide from behind the nearest wall. All your questions answered in less than a minute. But it aint like that. Typically I struggle through day after day on little issues about this and that, and never once did I find an assistance button. I just had to figure it out. Sometimes the issues are not so little. Sometimes the issues are quite big.

I was weird teenager. While other teens were into sports heroes and rock stars, I was into preachers. I loved those guys on the Christian radio stations. Chuck Smith and David Jeremiah and John MacArthur and Chuck Swindol. If you rode in my car chances were that you got to listen to one of these guys instead of Kiss or Rush. I was a weird kid.

During one of those listening sessions way back when I was a teen I heard Chuck Swindol say something that has stuck with me through all these years. He said that every person will face a major trial that will test your faith to its core at least once a year. He then said that if you are currently not going through one, not to worry, it's just around the corner. 

I've rounded that corner. The trials I am facing now seem so big and insurmountable. At times it seems like the heat waves are just way too intense. I just read yesterday a quote from a child that was taking about the earth's climate. He said, It is so hot in some parts of the world that the people there have to live other places. Believe me, I want to live somewhere else.

And I'm not alone. This past week a good friend of mine came over to hang out with Jennifer and me for an evening. She is a single mom and is a hoot to be around. I have a lot of love for her and have known her for years. Earlier in the week she found out that she has thyroid cancer. That's a biggy. When you hear that you have cancer, believe me when I say that Chuck's words come home to roost. Your faith is shaken to the core.

One thing I have come to realize is that being pain free is not an indication of being in God's will. If that were true, then Jesus of all people would have been out of God's will on the Cross. That was real pain. Suffering and agonizing and non-pain free. And it shook Jesus to the core. Just the night before he begged for another way. He looked desperately for an alternative. But the corner had to be turned.

In Bo Stern's book, Beautiful Battlefields (I highly recommend this book) she relates the story of how her husband, Steve had to break the news to their son, Joe about Steve's Lou Gehrig's disease. It is terminal disease that requires the bearer of it to slowly deteriorate. It is a big trial. And telling your child that Dad is going to die... Bo desperately wanted to fix it, protect her son. Try to make it all better. But how do you do that?

Here is what Bo said, I would have instinctively tried to fix things, and this situation could not be fixed; it could only be shared and then shifted to the shoulders of Jesus.  

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