Feb 20, 2006

I believe we face more challenges than we actually think, and that of varying degrees.  Challenges don't always come with pain and suffering, but with just the opposite.  It appears to be a more challenging test given to us from God.  I am referring to the healing of emotional hurts.  Time is usually the greatest recipe for such a painful state of the heart… but with time and God is even more of a tasteful combination.  Only relying on time for healing has a very favorable chance of forming a pessimistic heart… the infamous regretful and unforgiving heart.  That is not what is demanded of Christians, but what is demanded is to forgive… and I have heard many times to "forgive and forget."  To me that is confusing, it seems impossible to forget either hurtful or wonderful events that have passed in our life.  Although circumstances definitely weighs a factor in both of these situations.  This is where "history repeats itself" plays a role.

            I just realized I was getting way off course with those last sentences.  Let me get back to what I was talking about.  Healing is also a test.  It is the crutches and slings removed from a broken heart.  The prayers for healing and comfort we have been asking and often begging for that has been finally met.  The focus and determination we root into God with faith is possibly a good reason the hurt happened to begin with.  It is rather a more difficult challenge to keep a growing relationship with who helped the hurt heal.

That is why we pray for the nonexistence of pain and we pray for it to end within a flash.  We do not want to endure this pain, which I think is perfectly natural to feel such a way.  We often wonder why our pain doesn't heal within a several days, weeks, months, even years.  It is more a process than anything… or even a test…or both!  We are helped to slowly walk out of the house of pain by the grace of God, and slowly walk into what I would refer to as a comfort zone.  Now in this comfort zone, who are we to lean on when we are hurt?  No longer a stitch to hold our heart together, there is nothing to mend.  It is a difficult challenge to keep our focus on God even when our suffering is nothing but a blur in our rearview mirror.  We are to walk out of our pain with God and walk back into reality with a rendered and pure heart with God.  That explosion of pain leaving that vacant spot in our heart, it is that empty space only to be filled with God.  GOD IS LOVE!  My three favorite words formed in a perfect sentence.  Can you not see this pattern with pain?  It is necessary and needed in life to remind us who made us and that there is always hope.  This is where it gets beautiful; we are often hurt by the wrongful deeds of others.  It makes perfect sense, what better way for God to reveal evil by allowing us to experience such pain, in hopes of us hating evil and loving what is good and praying for relief from non other than God Himself, because some pain just cannot be healed with the workings of man.  After all, it's our faith to believe in what we cannot see, we are only human, and that makes us mortal.  Remember, pain is temporary, but love is forever.