Life Sucks and How I Deal with It

Just this past week, I have been reflecting on some … well … deeper, more meaningful things, and have made a few painfully obvious, albeit often ignored observations.   The first being, how ungrateful and cynical I am by nature.

Every day it seems I am bombarded by the bad, the distressing, the terrifying, the stupid, the asinine.  I guess it’s both in my nature as one who wishes to be aware of events around me, and as I retch at seeing the country I love and its traditions, culture, ‘religion’, and business being maliciously flushed down the toilet, and as I am the demographic a sucker to whom the 24 hour news media panders to.  I suppose it is hard for me to think otherwise as I read prayer request after prayer request for so-and-so whose father-in-law has cancer, or so-and-so whose friends mom just passed away, or so-and-so who is going through a messy divorce, or even so-and-so whose pastor ran off with a girlfriend who he had on the side.

Yes, it’s easy to be cynical.  Yes, life sucks.  Yes there is an awful lot of bad stuff out there.  And, yes, it is easy for me to get trapped and swallowed up by it and wallow in my own misery.  Which led me to my second observation:  Why am I surprised by all this?  If I am a true believer in God’s word, I should already expect all of this.  It shouldn’t be surprising that all of creation has steadily gone downhill since Eve first fell to temptation in the garden.  It shouldn’t be surprising that Satan still hates God and wishes to undermine Him and His work at every opportunity.  It shouldn’t surprise me that all of this is part of a grand, mysterious process that none of us can truly know in this lifetime.

So, I should not be surprised by this, and I should put everything in context.  Yes, this life is silly, hard, alternately depressing and joyful, and there is much suffering in it… but it is also temporal.  Therein is the catch.  I know where I am going when I die.  I know that this stupid life is not all there is.  I take joy in that.  I take joy in the fact that Christ died for my sins and that I am an heir with Him to the rich, eternal blessings of God that will be bestowed upon me in the life to come.  I think if I were to not have this assurance, that if this life were all that there was, I would have no desire to occupy the land of the living.

Praise God that I do have this HOPE (who originally coined this term and from whom Obama shamelessly ripped it off).  Praise God I will see His CHANGE when Christ comes again and CHANGES the creation, redeeming it from this disease of sin.

Praise God I am able to carry this message with me to share with other sufferers in this life.  Trust in Christ Jesus.  Be sorry for your sins.  Believe on Him for salvation, and you can have that joy too.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” Romans 8:18.