03.24.09
Falling Down
Have you ever been at the end of your rope facing such overwhelming odds or trials that you didn’t think you would overcome them? Just like a muscle is built up unless it is broken down through exercise, so is our faith. I have talked with many people about how they came to faith. Like myself, a lot of people talk about how it was a series of trials or traumatic events that rocked their words and pushed them towards God. Sometimes it can be things that just change our lives such as getting marriage or having kids. But sometimes it can be when the world that we have crafted around us comes crashing down upon us. That was my story. I actually wrote a poem about it called Soliloquy of a Broken Man. Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians.
We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, 2 Corinthians 1:8-10
So could trauma and trial be ways that God helps us to not rely on ourselves but rather more fully on Him? In my experience, I would have to say yes. All the twelve step programs talk about how people admit that their problem was greater than themselves and that they had to seek a higher power to see them through. Trauma brings pain and we all know how pain has a way of getting people’s attention. So I will end with a thought from 1 Peter where Peter says in 1 Peter 1:6-7.
though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 1 Peter 1:6-7
