Embracing Life with its Challenges
Recently I've been struck by the challenges of life. In my life, my friends lives, lives of those around me and lives around the world. Sometimes all I can ask is "Why is it so difficult and messy and painful sometimes?" I think we feel like we deserve more and have somehow earned an exemption ticket from challenges, especially when we begin to follow Jesus. I fought the challenges and vented my frustrations about the challenges in my own life and those close to me. As I've thought about how "unfair" life can be for me, I began to look at others lives and realize how unfair it is that I have so much and others have so little, how I don't have to worry about dying constently while for others it's always a present possibility.

Fair, how do we measure fair? At the bottom of it, I've come to take comfort in the words God spoke to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (1Cor 12:9) Paul goes on to write "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (1Cor 12:10) Embracing the challenges and difficulties of life, not wasting all of my own strength trying to resist them, but taking the opportunity to cling to Jesus and say, "God, walk with me and help me do the right thing." I am finding his grace and his presence are sufficient for any and all circumstances.