IT IS TIME TO GUARD OUR HEART

Sometimes our world is a place of upheaval and life can feel scary, cruel, or bewildering. We wonder if God even hears us when we cry out. Possibly we even rail at him and protest the suffering we endure. What the future holds is unknown, and control seems to be in the hands of the unpredictable.

There were days, not so long ago, that I felt this way.

The room was bright, and flowers were on the bedstand. Spring in the garden evidenced my sister’s lifelong love of gardening, but she did not see the blooms. Instead, she lay in her bed, knowing that she had lost the fight with cancer. I sat beside her and held her hand. We knew that it would be our last conversation. I lived far away, and she was fading too quickly for another visit. We would not see each other again, so we talked, reminisced about our childhood, laughed, cried and pretended to be brave as we said our goodbyes. My mother’s first-born child, my older sister, died two months later.

In the ten months prior, we buried my mother-in-law after a year of watching her slowly forget who she was. A few months later, my sister-in-law was buried and, as I stood next to her two children in their grief, I knew that my own sister’s time was mere weeks ahead. The pain of it all hit me hard, and in my deepest, darkest sorrow, even more suffering cruelly came my way. It came in waves and waves that swept me away to that dark night of the soul. 

Yet God…

Yet God was faithful as I clung to him. He was my refuge in a blinding, heart wrenching storm. Through the year that followed, a year I barely noticed slip by, God used my suffering to reshape me. Going around the suffering was not an option. I had to go through the valley of the shadow of death, and even though evil tried to make me dreadfully afraid, I found safety in God’s presence day in, and night out .  A speck of light shone in my darkness. The Light reshaped me; made me resilient and stronger, ready for the master’s use. And use me, he has. I have ministered comfort to the hurting in so many, many situations in recent times, and done so with a kindness that only my own sorrow could produce. I, can say, like Joseph who was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery and imprisoned, that God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.[1]

Why am I telling you this?

In our broken world, there will be pain and sorrow. No one escapes it. Death, disease, despair was never part of God’s plan.

Yet God … in his deep mercy will use these for our good and his work.

Again, like Joseph, we can come to a place where we say, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done …”[2] God can redeem even the worst possible situation for good.

In this present age where change can happen so quickly, I see much suffering. If you are going through a painful and frightening time, I urge you to cling to the Lord with all that you have. There is no going around your suffering, only through it. As C.S. Lewis said, “there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it.”  Our suffering will shape us one way or another. We will either allow it to make us bitter and smaller or, if we allow it, God can turn our suffering into a redemptive pain, and we will find that God will make us fruitful, right there, in the land of our suffering.

Our job is to tend to our heart. Redirect it to God when desolation wants to set in. Look rather to our kind and gentle savior for his consolation. Seek after it, cling to it. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.[3]

“Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”[4]

May we think on these things!

[1] Genesis 42:52

[2] Genesis 50:20

[3] Proverbs 4:23

[4] John 14:27