Have you ever felt bad about thinking you have it hard? You know that there are other people out there who have it worse than you do and so you shouldn’t be having a hard time, right? The only thing is, sometimes your life is overwhelming. Sometimes it’s more than you can bear. Sure, other folks may be worse off, but for you, this struggle is real, and it’s frankly too much. I think a lot of us assume that the Godly thing to do is to simply suck it up and deal with it. We think that what God wants is for us to ignore the pain and simply rise above it like an extreme athlete training for some impossible physical feat. We think Jesus is frustrated. We feel guilty for struggling in life’s problems because we believe the Lord wants us smiling through all of it, all of the time. In John 5, Jesus went to a place covered with sick and disabled people. There was one man there who had been paralyzed for thirty eight years. That’s longer than I’ve been alive. The coolest thing about this story is that Jesus saw the man lying there and learned he had been there for a long time. That’s what John says. Jesus thought the guy had been suffering for a long time. He didn’t say, “Cheer up, dude! Thirty eight years is nothing in the light of eternity!” No, Jesus recognized it was hard. Jesus sees your pain as well and He cares about how it feels to you. He knows you’v been having a rough time and He’s not looking for you to simply rise above it. No, He wants to meet you in it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment