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challenges, christ, christian faith, dying, hope, hope in christ, love
That was a downer of a previous post, wasn’t it? I discourage myself as I reread it, bleak and grey as it sits there.
But I failed to mention the part that redeems the story and that motivates me to keep on trucking, even when the curves in the road make me feel nauseous.
I think of the time I crossed the span of nearly two Canadian provinces (and they are vast, up here) with a benevolent long-haul trucker my husband and I knew from church. He was the generous father of kids in my husband’s youth group and offered to take me home to Edmonton from Vancouver where I was visiting for a wedding. My last post and it’s attendant gloominess remind me of the nausea that overtook me as I rode along with this man. The overlapping discouragement at the prospect of thirteen plus more hours of this caused my head to sag. Ending the post where I did echos the way I excused myself to go sleep in the sleeper compartment of his rig. I ended, you see, before I got to the good part. I ended on a note of sick and gloom and forgot to tell you about the glorious mountainous path that saw me through to arrive back home to the goodness of people who loved me back at home.
My friend who loves pink would gently rebuke me if she could read this last post. She would tell me firmly, but in a way that would be gracious and that would spare my dignity, that it’s not all for naught. Her sufferings aren’t random and meaningless even when they most appear to be so. She has a hope in Christ that lights up her path ahead, and so do I, though I lost sight of it for a moment as I wrote that last post.
God doesn’t promise that this Earthly journey will be seamless. He doesn’t promise that the brilliant flash of diamonds will characterize my days. He does promise, however, that my own sinful heart can rest now in the knowledge that Someone better than me has cleaned it up so that I’m secured a place in Heaven with Him.
Christians aren’t better than other people. In fact, often times they are substantially worse. They aren’t always shiny with the joy that lights them up from within. See previous post for ample evidence should further substantiation be required. They are merely people who along the way have become aware of their need for better and for more than they themselves are capable of. If they ever lead you believe that they think otherwise and they really they think they are quite marvelous and perhaps even meritorious, then they should be ashamed of themselves. Ignore those ones of us, even if in that moment it’s me who is on her high horse. The whole point with Christians is that we are not the Point. He is. And thankfully, He is more than sufficient to meet the gap between us and Goodness.
These are the kinds of things my friend in pink would say. She would hate to see the story end with that last post.