Hard Times

Had in interesting experience this morning!

Here I was, driving to work, listening to the radio, as you do. And, of the five songs played on the radio that I could concentrate on reasonably without distracting too much from my driving, four of them were saying something to the effect of “life with Jesus is fantastic everyday”. And I thought to myself, “Man, I can’t really be a Christian, I mustn’t even know the guy. If their lives are so great since they’ve met Him, then I clearly haven’t met Him!”

Now I do not mean to say that my life is not the better for knowing Him. On the contrary, my life IS far better through knowing Him. He gives me Reason to live and Hope to carry on. But "everyday feels like I’m walking on sunshine" as one of the songs said – yeah right!

I’ll be first to admin that the “ups” are better than before I met Him or lived His way, but I think the downs are worse when you know Jesus. See, He’s there through it all, always there, always helping, always working everything out for good. But that doesn’t mean everything IS good – in fact it implies the opposite, that some things are going to be very bad. And the trouble with knowing Jesus is the times when it seems like He’s not there. In all the good times you have Him along side, helping, encouraging etc, and then come the dark times when you can’t feel that support. You cry out for His help, and can’t hear a reply. You’re stumbling around lost, helpless and alone and all the time wondering “didn’t He say He’d always be there?” It’s much worse to be promised someone will be there to support you through everything and then wander around seemingly without them, than to never have someone say they’ll be there. At least without that promise you know you’re on your own. You’re never left wondering if you’ve done something terribly wrong that has caused the promiser to walk away.

I’d rather not get married, than have my wife promise me the world then not be there when I needed her the most and it was within her powers to be there!

The trick of course is to remember in those hard times that Christ IS there whether we “feel” Him or not, and allow our trust in Him and faith to develop and grow - which is of course the whole reason for the hard times. As Philip Yancy says, Faith is believing in something, and acting on that belief, that will only make sense once you’ve come out the other side of it.

I hope those song writers come back to planet Earth soon :)

Ironically, or perhaps not so ironic, the one song that wasn't like that out of the 5 was KJ52's remix of The Hard Way