When its unsteady

Faith during the hard times

As a starting point let me say I do not have this completely on lock to the point where I do not worry. Having survived a few personal tornadoes, hurricanes, attempted drownings, emotional rock bashings and kicks down the stairs, enables me to function relatively well during times I find rago (difficult and messy). But as we encounter different things along this journey called life, I could never say I 100% have this in the bag as I do not know everything I am going to face.

Though there will be days where I struggle to stand, my aim is to always get back up. I have learnt that total faith doesn’t always lead to your ideal outcome, the examples I have of this are actually endless. There are times I have had total faith in God’s resolution abilities. That he could and that he would answer my prayers, and intervene and resolve a situation exactly how I was praying for it to happen. Only for the situation to get worse or for nothing to change. Right now, you are probably thinking, “wow this is just the positive hope-filled read I need in the times where Coronavirus is upon us….,” but stay with me!

My Basis

To clarify my views, I believe in God, more specifically I believe in Jesus Christ. To see exactly what I believe in I would love for you to watch Joel Osteen’s docudrama called ‘Jesus: His Life’. I am a major fan of docudramas as you get the best of all worlds, expertise, years of history and drama! I cannot recommend this docudrama highly enough. I also cannot see how you can view or buy this (helpful I know!). I watched it on the History Channel last year and then puff-the-magic-dragon it has disappeared ever since, but who knows maybe you can find it somehow and let us all know where we can get it from. In short, I believe that back in the day God became flesh by sending his son [Jesus] to earth to die for our sins. Jesus’s rising after death is the big Easter miracle that provides us with grace as he took away our sins by dying for us. Before leaving Earth to join his father he left us the holy spirit [also known as the comforter], He lives inside of us. I really don’t know how to describe this; the only thing I can say is He provides us with a sense of intuition. If I were not religious and I read what I just stated, it would be like someone telling me they just spoke to E.T. yesterday and he said not to bother phoning home, he would catch me later…., I understand how this sounds. I grew up in church so all of this is very familiar to me, but I appreciate if I didn’t this would be just out there, probably too far out there at first.

Like all of us when I was younger I did quite a few stupid things, there can be this invincibility vibe or just plain ignorance that certain types of bad things really can happen to you. There are a couple of times where I had limited options in regular situations, but I had a strong sense I was in danger and I came out just fine. There are other times where I made a right choice somehow, I say somehow because I didn’t appreciate just how right they were until a long time after. It has been many years since then and I am talking over a decade, but as I sit here now I remember it like it was yesterday. In the danger situations I prayed internally for help as that’s all I could do. In the right choice ones I was not praying at all, I just knew that I shouldn’t do it; one was accepting a ride to school from someone I knew but I didn’t really, and in the other one I had had quite a bit to drink beforehand but still something rang through that I shouldn’t do it.

There are some choices that historical military, civil rights and political leaders have made for the greater good, that when I sit and properly think about them I shiver, due to what was at stake at the time and the courage required to make that call. There must have been something deep down inside of them guiding them.

There is so much in the world today that is just not right, seriously bad/extremely complicated or both, with no quick fix in sight and I struggle with this at times as I believe in God. History and present whether it’s your own, or someone you care about, or nations that you love can be difficult to digest. If God has all the power and can do all things, then why do the innocent suffer? Logically suffering doesn’t make sense to me. The statement “we live in a fallen world”, I get I have heard many times in church, you just need to turn on the news to see it. But if God has all power, get out the lightning bolts player and start zapping you some baddies, we shouldn’t be needing to call 999 or 911 or go to court, get those bolts on the go! But that’s not how it is for reasons that are beyond me clearly. However, this does not take away from my belief in God’s justice in this life or the next. Nor the fact that we need systems in place to carry out justice and protect people now. We need doctors, scientists and researchers to help us continually fight for our health.

Photo credit: Josh J Fisher (Unsplash)