Everyone I know is struggling with something! Bills, work, spouses, kids, schooling, friends, habits, and life in general head the list. Often friends struggle with several challenges at the same time! When you add on top of this the painful list; disease, accidents, and death, you have a cocktail that could knock down even the most stalwart. Some struggle with depression while they try to cope, and even the strongest frequently lose sight of hope. We hang on by threads.
In contrast we read about people who seem to have it all. Life is a simple process for them; everything appears to come, almost automatically. Complex and difficult situations appear to solve themselves. Yet, even in their lives, marriages fail, kids face the ravages of addiction, and good friends take advantage. The thread they are holding onto is no stronger than our own line; in fact it may have even fewer threads.
“If good people barely make it, what’s in store for the bad!” (Proverbs 11.30)
With a gentle reminder to myself, good people struggle as much because of their own fears and doubts, as for the difficulties that life throws at them. This statement in no way minimizes the size, quantity, and intensity of life’s challenges. Disease can drain even the strongest reserve. Death knocks the wind from the sail of even the most ardent believer in the resurrection. Betrayal is stunningly painful, no more how much one anticipated it or understood that human beings are inherently flawed. Life’s threads are tenuous on a good day.
I do find that one thread carries and then carries on. God decision and gift through his Son is an irrevocable act that forever changed the opportunity you and I have today and in the future. We are because of what He is. We can be due to what He did. The threads of life we hold to are fine, but they are our threads. His line is already holding us up, it never fails! We may think we are on the verge of collapse, yet God’s line waiting.
