Archive for Pain and suffering
Mercies in Disguise: Finding God in Your Trials
Posted by: | Comments
Seasons of trials and troubles, pain and suffering, disappointments and dying dreams can leave all of us with more questions than answers. We find ourselves unable to box our theological answers as neatly as before. We wrestle with questions like, “Where are you, God?” “Why have you deserted me?” “Are you real, God?” In our trials, we reach for our false strengths and we find that they were only illusions.
Enjoy this post? Share it with your friends by clicking the Facebook LIKE button..
Powered By Facebook Like Post Plugin
Seeing Christmas Through the Gift of Myrrh
Posted by: | Comments
I love meaningful gifts. What’s a meaningful gift? For me, it’s a gift that says you know me. You understand at least some of the essence of who I am. And it cannot be dishtowels. My hubby and kids all know that I hate getting dishtowels for Christmas (lol, can you tell that I get dishtowels every year from a certain beloved relative?)
Enjoy this post? Share it with your friends by clicking the Facebook LIKE button..
Powered By Facebook Like Post Plugin
When It Seems Too Late
Posted by: | Comments
On the day after Thanksgiving, I awakened to my 2:45 a.m. alarm. I slipped out of bed and tiptoed into the bathroom, trying not to awaken my husband. The night before, I had laid my clothes, my shoes, my jewelry, my phone, my coupons, and my small shopping purse, which goes over my head and across my body so as not to be in the way of the day’s serious work. I quickly dressed for the day’s task, right down to my tennis shoes which are my personal requirement for a major shopping day. I downed a cup of coffee faster than you could say Black Friday.
My daughter and I arrived at the mall at 3:05 a.m. to snag the best deals at Belk, a local department store, which had opened at 3:00 a.m. To my dismay, there were no parking spots left in the front of the mall. None. Apparently all the folks who had hit the 12 a.m. sales at Wal-Mart and Target and Best Buy were now at the mall. Not to be outwitted, I found a place to park behind the mall even though there were no entrances there to any anchor stores. After all, with my tennis shoes on, I could walk/run the length of the mall in a minute flat.
Enjoy this post? Share it with your friends by clicking the Facebook LIKE button..
Powered By Facebook Like Post Plugin
Shattering Illusions
Posted by: | Comments
Most of us have willingly entered a house of illusions, perhaps at a carnival or some circus event. Perhaps we’ve walked into a house of mirrors and were suddenly faced with distortions of our senses. Even though we know that what we are seeing is an illusion, we are nonetheless subject to the illusion. It feels real. Our depth and motion perception is affected. Our brain misinterprets the information it is receiving and gives us a false image.
We often live in illusions, some conscious and many unconscious.
How often do you and I choose, willingly, to live in a house of illusions? We may refuse to face the truth about our finances or our weight or a diagnosis we’ve been given by the doctor. We may prefer a world of fantasies which require nothing of us relationally. We may choose to numb our reality through drugs, alcohol, pornography, shopping, gambling, etc.
Or we may refuse to face the truth about our personal history.
It’s easy to do and can be much more comfortable than the truth. The problem is, however, that when we construct our world around our illusions, we are not living in the truth.
God instructed Isaiah to write to a rebellious lying people (Isaiah 30). These people basically had said to their spiritual leaders that they would prefer not to know the truth. They asked for the prophets and seers to speak and see what was comfortable, easy on their ears and hearts, “smooth things, deceits”, and please, above all, do not confront them with the Holy One.
Enjoy this post? Share it with your friends by clicking the Facebook LIKE button..
Powered By Facebook Like Post Plugin
Facing Sorrow and Pain; Finding Healing
Posted by: | Comments
My son quizzed me about a recent flurry of “unfriending” on facebook that had to do with an ended relationship. Although he had nothing directly to do with the relationship, just because he was a friend of the “ex”, he was “unfriended”. Several others, including myself, had been “unfriended” after this relationship ended.
It was obvious that this individual had quickly moved to eradicate all evidence of the painful end of her relationship.
Oh, that it were that easy to erase pain! Just one click of a button, an “unfriending” or two, and viola!, the pain is gone! (or at least all the reminders of the pain is gone. ) We all know that doesn’t really work. I know because I’ve tried it many times. While we may be able to get our pain out of sight initially, that living entity is going to eventually come kicking and screaming out of its grave for things buried alive are, well, still alive!
Every life has its own measure of sorrow and pain. It’s easy to want to move away from the pain, erase it, refuse to mention it or acknowledge it, but a life lived fully must face pain and suffering and feel it in order to ultimately find healing.
Understandably we are afraid of pain, whether emotional or physical. Certainly a world in perfection, as it was in the beginning and will be again in the end, is a world without pain. Yet in our current reality, pain is a part of life and while we desperately want to believe that there must be a way around experiencing our own pain, avoiding our sorrows also means losing part of the fullness of life.
Enjoy this post? Share it with your friends by clicking the Facebook LIKE button..
Powered By Facebook Like Post Plugin
