The last two places where God has led me--Morris, MN and Eagle Butte, SD--have been both breathtakingly beautiful and shockingly painful by turns. It’s not just a cliché when pastors tell you the most peaceful place is in the eye of the storm. I know this--His presence is typically the most palpable when I begin to think that my worst fears are coming true. Since I started teaching teenagers, I have been dreading the day that one of my students goes to jail to do hard time, and praying fervently against any of them committing suicide. Both of those fears have reared their heads within the last semester, though the alleged suicide attempt was not successful. However, guess what I found out? When those moments come, which they will, God will still be there, and He will not allow me to be shaken. As I sat on the floor of the cafeteria cradling my student’s head and stroking his hair while we waited for the paramedics, there was room for nothing in my heart but peace. While my heart did sink when I heard what one of my graduates had gotten into, His peace again enveloped me and left no room for despair.
Lines from a few songs are overtaking me as I think of how good my God is. The first is “How He Loves,” by John Mark McMillan, and the line that steals my breath away explains how I can entirely transcend my fears: “All of the sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory.” We may rightly worry about those who deny their problems, but if we can’t tear our eyes away from His face, it is only to be expected that our troubles would blur until they scarcely seem to exist.
When I consider what I have learned, I also think of the chorus from a beautiful song by Laura Story that is appropriately entitled “Blessings”: “What if Your blessings come through raindrops, what if Your healing comes through tears? What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near? And what if trials of this life are Your mercy in disguise?” God brings pain and sorrow into our lives to drive us to Him and to make us hunger for Heaven. Later in the song the writer adds, “What if my greatest disappointments, or the aching of this life, is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy?” I know now that I will never ask God for an easy or painless life, because that would be empty and meaningless. At the beginning of this coming year, I will ask Him for a rich year, full of all the tears, laughter, beauty, and pain that He wants to bestow on me.
