Sometimes when I am going to bed I'll think of what I want to type in a blog until I drift to sleep and I think .. I'll remember this tomorrow.. right as I fall asleep..and I never do. I do remember that I was thinking about the suffering that we experience in life. There are different degrees. A hop, skip and a jump. Hurdles. Sometimes I'm sure it feels like basic training (I don't even think I could survive that.) I'm always amazed that no matter how hard it feels, even when I feel like giving up.. I manage to get by even by the skin of my teeth. I've had to re-take classes. I've been talked down from panic attacks. I've been given pep talks. I've cried over not making the team. I've lost every thing I had and not known where I was going to eat, where I was going to sleep. I've left my community and had to make a new set of friends in a whole new family and friends. I've had to establish trust and a reputation which I still don't even know I have.
I think about how my flesh reacts or has reacted in every circumstance to rejection and to my suffering. I don't feel proud of myself. I've laughed in hindsight. I can laugh because I know there is healing where there was hurt. and I have a better understanding of how everything was set in motion but my flesh and my heart is and was so deceitful. I was there knowing I had Jesus but it was leaving that I was able to better experience him. Jesus suffered so much while he was alive, and God laid upon him the sins of the Earth when he was hung on the cross. I've felt like I was dying, and I've felt like not living, but I know I've never felt the weight of the world that Jesus experienced. So my suffering is so insignificant to that of Jesus He loved others in his suffering. Jesus continued his ministry until the time of his death. He lead people to the father over and over again. His miracles weren't even documented to the extent to which they happened because there were so many. I think about my suffering, it has produced perseverance, and perseverance produces faith. I've never hated God, never argued with God. I've always known every thing will workout, it always does but my fleshly response isn't to tell people the Good News, and that God works all things for his Good.
I think of the things in the Bible, and the people who God used, Job, King David (I dare not compare myself to any of these people) but I have no doubt these people saw and experienced traumatic things. and God has used them and their lives to teach us and the people all through out the world great things. I think my favorite is even in his suffering Jesus could have taken himself off the cross but he didn't. He chose to stay there because he knew what God's redemptive plan is/was. While hanging on the cross there were two thieves, one on both sides of him. One hurled insults at Jesus and the other recognized Jesus as God, and asked him to remember him when Jesus entered into his kingdom. Jesus replied to him and told him "he would be with him in Paradise"
Y'all the Bible is beautiful. It brings me to tears and I know this must have been terrifying. I'm telling you I love God. but MY FLESH, if people were putting me on a cross I would have been fighting. and for Jesus to just submit, it breaks my heart. THESE PEOPLE KILLED HIM. Some days I don't want to get out of bed because I feel like life is too much but I'd still never say my experiences or losses are worse because God loved me so much that he would suffer the weight of the world to save it. I don't know how you can't fall in love with what you read.
