| Roses, Rainbows and the Valley of Despair |
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It’s easy to tell someone else to be hopeful and optimistic in their tragedy when your own life is filled with sunshine and beaming with happiness.
When God takes you to the edge, He will do one of two things. He will catch you as you fall; or He will teach you how to fly. Personally, I would rather learn how to fly, but we must fall first before we can fly. The gist of my blog is about finding hope and being thankful, no matter what. Said in the same sentence, it seems too painful to bear, especially if your glowing, happy world is turned upside down, inside out and shaken to the core. You may even be saying as you are reading this, "How do you know?"
This is not about my story, but I have been through my own valley of despair and I sometimes ask God, “What is the point You are trying to make, or the lesson You are trying to teach me through this?” My “valley of despair” blew my ideas out of the water and tested the very foundation of my faith, but it also placed me with an opportunity to pursue the heart of God. Just the beginning, and glimpses of how I have encountered Him in such an extraordinary way has given me the chance to comprehend what “trusting God” actually means. Only Christ offers hope.
all of these become nothing unless we choose Christ as the centre, make prayer the wheel that turns our lives, and opt for a relationship with Christ as our first priority, unless we diligently study His word, inscribe His law in our thinking, and engrave His promises in our heart. All else will fail.
Sometimes we ask God to save us from our circumstances. I often question, what is the purpose for which Christ allows us to be tested and tried?
Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses (Ovid). The thorn today will become a flower someday. In hindsight, this is hard to swallow, but:
When life throws us hard blows it is difficult to find a reason to smile, let alone hope. Even if you can’t or it seems too painful to, somewhere through the tears, the pain, remember that, after every storm, there will be a rainbow. God’s promises to us are eternal, for He Himself has said,
When you’re in a situation you can’t fix, can’t change and can’t escape, trust God! In doing this you will learn to find hope. Your adverse situation might be God’s perfect opportunity to go through doors only He can open. Pink roses image © copyright accessed from www.Flickr.com under a Creative Commons License: from joe.(a true story)'s photostream. |
Our blog this month comes from Ava Rajah. Ava works for the NHS. and is an SCF member. She comes originally from Southern Africa, now residing in the UK. Sadly, Ava saw her marriage '"cut short" last year and she has a heart to reach other similar women through God's direction.
Maybe it’s to find hope in Him alone, to be thankful despite the way things are, to make us stronger, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to compel us to depend on Him, to sink our roots into Him, to gain a new perspective, to learn to appreciate what He has given us, to appoint our calling, to create a miracle. So that when it happens, there won’t be any doubt that it was HIM! Often what we ask God for is not what He gives. He sees the bigger picture of which we only know a part.