It has been my experience that most of the Christian life takes place in the wilderness, not the Promised Land. That is, it is much more common to be struggling (spiritually) in one form or another or to one degree or another than it is to be sitting back and relaxing. One of the reasons for this is that spiritual growth requires work and effort, which means there will likely be a lot of struggling and failing. Another, and often overlooked reason I think, is injustice. Times when God does not do what he has promised to do.
“The teachers that were hard, the ones that made things difficult and forced you to learn and improve, those are the ones that you will remember. Not the easy ones who tried to make things as easy as possible so that you felt good about yourself.”
Sometimes the storms of life can be quite devastating, even if you “prepared” for them. Devastating to the point that after it has passed we take a look at our life or faith or both and we are left wondering how, or even if, we will be able to rebuild it. This task can indeed be quite difficult, but it is also doable even though it might take a while.
Hurricanes are a fact of life for me as Floridian. Every season (June 1 – Nov. 30) for us Floridians it’s not a matter of if we will get a hurricane, but when we will get a hurricane and how badly we will be affected by it. Sometimes we just get some rain. Other times we get a lot of rain. Still other times we get a bunch of both wind and rain. In light of this reality the prudent among us start gradually stocking up on supplies (e.
When we look back on past events we tend to remember mostly the good things and leave out the bad things. Without both the good and the bad we have an inaccurate memory of the past, and this inaccuracy can lead us to make mistakes in the present or in the future.
The spiritual consequences of poor mental health can be great.
