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Hope During Troubling Times.

Hope During Troubling Times.

It is hard to imagine a future that is free from pain. When we suffer, we want immediate relief. We can spend all our time wondering when our pain will end, and that is a normal response to human suffering. What I have learned in the past about suffering is that the cause of pain might not end, but the way we process and accept the pain can ease our anxiety, and cause the human soul to feel joy again. Living with uncertainty is a gift that we should all desire, especially when we feel we have lost our way as a society. We might not feel that we are being given any direction as to how we can continue living with instability, and we might be questioning the purpose of our situation and how we can be happy despite our very lives being put to the test. There is no magic wand, or quick fix, but that is the good news!

When we as humans are forced to face our mortality, we have a choice to make. Like all choices, there are serious consequences to what we choose. Can I honestly say that if God took away all my suffering in a moment, that I would be a better person because of it, or could it be my reality that God is using a great challenge and a pain to make me into the person the Lord wants me to be? The question we need to ask is not when but why? When we understand why God allows our suffering, our perspective in life changes, and we are able to deal with our circumstances with a different attitude and a plan. When we allow God to shape us during these difficult times, we are agreeing that God's plan for our lives is better than any plan we have!

I believe that the reason why God doesn't immediately remove our suffering is because He is trying to teach us something through our suffering, or the suffering of others. Our suffering is not redemptive in that our salvation belongs to God alone and not ourselves, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from it. What we learn depends on our disposition before the Lord, which also determines how we suffer. Suffering can be shared and if there is any value to it, it is that we don't have to suffer alone.

We can't stop the passage of time, and feeling like we can't slow things down can be very frustrating. Waiting for God to work is also a gift that can be given to us by the Lord. When we demand a sign, or continue to demand our own way, it usually upsets God, because He is trying to change us through our hardships. When we allow ourselves to be conformed through our pain, the intensity of what we are dealing with tends to diminish. When we continue to demand that God would give us immediate relief, we could be closing the door to our own redemption permanently.

Suffering should cause us all to depend more on God, and less on ourselves. We shouldn't live in denial of our realities and our lives, because sometimes the only way out of something is through, and if we can't make it to the light, we need to live with the light we already have, and to share it with others who are suffering. This is Mike.

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