Is there any real reason to fight for joy? When the health of the ones we love sharply decline, when test results come back inconclusive and biospies are scheduled? Is there a reason to choose thankfulness when little children get sick, when a little kid lays tied to a hospital bed instead of tethered to the outdoors, lounging at will in the green grass where he belongs? That unspoken pondering that we don’t dare say… But many a Psalmist dared ask. Is God trustworthy? Is He steadfast and faithful in the midst of all this spiraling? We could spin ourselves right  into a panic and try to control everything for ourselves…try to twist every outcome to serve our own pleasure and purpose?

We could try to blame God for all this brokenness, but we would be all wrong.

All lost trying to be our own god, trying to get our own way and wriggle out from underneath everything hard that God allows. The problem with pain and trial and everything we wish to be undone about our difficulties in life isn’t that God is unfaithful. God our Father is faithful, uncontested fact. He gave His only Son for His enemies. There is no greater measure of love or faithfulness than that, none. The problem we have isn’t whether or not God is good; the problem is sin…our sin…our very own sin which broke the creation and everything else. Creation groans inwardly and we groan.

We writhe with anguish ready to throw off the earthy for the eternal, eager to throw off the momentary for the glory, to cast aside the weight of our flesh for the weightlessness of forgiveness and complete sinlessness.

Every time we look at the news and our hearts rip in two over the sadness breaking out all around us… Every time we wish it were different and we wish we could wave our hand and just create a new beginning… Every time. Every. Single. Time. What we are asking for is heaven. What we are asking for is our Savior. What we have always really needed is Christ. In desperate times even the unbeliever will ask for a Savior…even if he balks at the idea in the end.  And the honest confess what we really want is something brand new, a new reality where no one dies, a new place where no one hurts another’s feelings, a new spot to thrive and really see things the way they actually are instead of always being so confused. What is unseen is eternal but in this seeing realm we are always confused about that reality. We are asking for heaven, and it was set in our hearts. We were always meant to ask for it.  We are hoping in a Savior who knows all about our every difficulty; we are worshiping a God who filters everything good and hard thing through His knowing hands. We are not spiraling. We are always held in His sovereignty.

We are not to accuse God of wrong, because things go wrong.

The brokenness is to awaken us to reality. The seen is temporal. The unseen is eternal.

And we were made for eternity.