Turned Upside Down
Have you ever had a life moment where everything changed in a blink of an eye? Like someone just flipped a switch in your life, and it wasn’t in a good way. I have had those moments in life where you wish it was all a bad dream, and you could wake up and everything would be back to the way it was. I know some people that had these life-altering moments this week. It is as if your life just got flipped upside down, and it takes everything inside you to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
These times are moments that really test our faith. Will we allow the trial to make us bitter towards God? I don’t think it is wrong to get angry, to ask questions, to cry out in frustration, etc… because our Father in Heaven is our Creator; therefore, He knows how we will react. He is also big enough to handle it if we are, at first, mad at Him. We don’t understand why He allows bad things to happen to us sometimes. Right now, we are looking through a glass darkly (1 Cor 13:12), so there are many mysteries of God that we cannot grasp. However, after some time, we must decide to live and trust God that one day all of this will work out for good (Rom 8:28).
We can’t stay in despair and anxiety forever or we will miss life. I know that it is hard to pick up the shattered pieces, but we must not give up. We must find some type of glue to put as many pieces back together again. I don’t know why bad things happen to good people. I don’t know when Jesus is going to return to set things right, but I do know that I can’t let things that happen to me in this life cause me to quit the race.
We have to acknowledge and accept the fact that God feels our pain, knows our pain, and is also in pain when He sees His people suffer (Psa 116:15; Isa 53:3-4). However, suffering is part of life in this world because we do not live in the Kingdom of God yet. Therefore, we must seek God during our sufferings. We must ask Him to comfort us. We must read His words. Psalms 42 is a very good Psalm to turn to. The Psalmist is in despair in the beginning because there are so many who keep asking him, “Where is your God?” (Psa 42:3). He remembers the time he led the people to God’s house in “joy and thanksgiving,” but now his soul is in despair (Ps 42:4-5a). His solution, “Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence” (Ps 42:5b, 11).
We have to remain in a state of hope in God. Hope leads to faith (Heb 11:1). We have to hold steadfast to the truth that God is in control. When we put our trust in God and continue living, we show our enemy that no matter what happens to us in this life, it will not destroy our faith. It will not keep us from loving and trusting our Father and our Messiah.
I don’t know why God is waiting so long to send His Son to heal this land. I don’t enjoy the suffering that happens every day, but I do know one thing; this is not the only lifetime we will have. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:16-18).