How many true sob stories have I heard? More than I can count, and I’m sure you’ve heard them, too. And I’m confident that you’ve lived your own sob story just like I have. We all get things in life that we don’t want, that we didn’t choose, that we wish hadn’t happened. Life is complicated and confusing like that. How can I respond when I hear the desperate questions, “Why do you think this happened to me? Why would God allow this to happen to me? What am I supposed to do now? How can I trust God after this?” I .get. it. I know how that feels. Here’s what I’ve written out for myself so that I know where the pegs are for hanging up my endless questions… I’ve resigned myself to not having all the answers in this life; I choose to circle back to resigning myself to the truths that are hard for me to comprehend. But truths they are none the less, and the truth gives me a peg to hang my confusion on, a place to leave the overwhelm, a place to come back and find the pegs of truth.
- God is Sovereign (in and through and over all things that have ever happened and will ever happen), and I am not.
- My job in life is to show up every day to what God has for me, and I will always be the last to know anything about what’s happening, bc God is Sovereign and I am not.
- The core of my response to God need only be: worship Him and believe Him. No matter what’s happening, I can worship him and I can believe him to be who he says he is.
- God never contradicts himself. Even when I feel there is a contradiction, I run to him, and he will answer me, he will help me with His Spirit, he will comfort me bc I am his child, he will be gracious and merciful with me in my confusion.
- Life is like a rollercoaster; the older I get the more I come to terms with this. Nothing about human history or society or political wars or my own decisions is going to change that. The world is topsy turvy due to the curse of sin. I’m on this ride till I get off it.
- I have Jesus for this life. And I have Jesus for the next life. So either way, here on Earth or there in Heaven, I’m never alone.
- It’s a 1:1 statistic that I will die. If I die young or I die old, that doesn’t change the fact that I live to serve my Creator while I’m on Earth, bc he made me and brought me here and I didn’t make myself or orchestrate my own story. I live for him bc there is no other reality. I serve him till the day I die. When I leave this life, I go to perfect rest and peace with him in the flesh.
- If I could pick the way I die, I would, but he has not given me that option. So I continually pray over my death and for his mercy to sustain me through the living and the dying.
