Life is hard, but God is good

Unexpected beauty

Oh my, what a psalm of despair!  For the writer, life is overwhelming. As an old quotation says “There’s nothing so bad it couldn’t have been worse and it was worse.”  

I remember yelling at God when life was hard and answers were hard to come by.

A friend who was going through a hard time said “I feel like giving up on my faith.”

And today I talked to a woman who was discouraged and feeling like she couldn’t be strong for her son one more day. He has a long-term illness with many surgeries. Yet with God’s help she will be strong so her son doesn’t despair. 

Each of us in those moments can meditate on all the works that God has done. In our thirst for him we can reach our hands like a desert thirsty for rain. With the light of a new day we can look forward to God’s word of love. He will show us the way to go… he will guide us with his eye.  In her Stephen Ministry devotions last week, Jeannie Forrest commented on the beauty of the lotus flower…how it grows in the mud at the edge of a pond, often in not very clean water. Yet from the mud comes this beautiful flower.            

I could wish the psalmist could read Romans 5:3-5 in The Message. Despite being hemmed in with troubles, “we can keep alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit.”

By Marge Stromberg