Hi, I trust you are well and life is good.
So today what I will be writing about is more or less a crisis post. This probably will not speak to you if right now you are celebrating and your life has been a roll of testimony upon testimony. This will not be for you if all you have in life, in the things that are tangible and evident is a reason for you to celebrate. But if you are in a trench and it seems situations have kicked the fight out of you; or if you have a problem that you have had for an extended period of time, a crippling situation where you have been holding on for a while for a breakthrough, where you have wished there would be a change for a while and maybe others around you have had the same problem, or similar or worse and you are wondering why it has not happened for you yet.
And maybe you wonder what you have done to be in the situation; if there is a situation you could have changed earlier, or a decision you could have chosen otherwise. You wonder what you have done wrong to deserve this situation, or what you are not doing right to see yourself out of the slumber and you ask yourself why me? What did I do? And as the question completely registers in your mind, your energy is sapped from you, completely because there seems to be no answer and hence no remedy; almost as if your mind unwillingly resigns to a fate where the situation just goes on forever.
Questions like “Why don’t I have a job yet?” Why am I not yet married at 31? Why am I not promoted at work? Why am I single on valentine’s day? Why am I blind? Why am I deaf? Why am I a cripple? Why am I diabetic? Why me? Why o-why-o-why do I have cancer/fibroids/HIV? Why am I unable to bear children? Why me? Why is my family the most chaotic mess imaginable? What did I do to deserve being born here? Thoughts that register in our mind and that sometimes we are afraid to voice out for one reason or another. Why was I born a Zimbabwean, In a country with a failing economic system and not the brightest of outlooks? What did I do to deserve being a Zimbabwean/black/African? Why me? Why was I born into all these problems? Why me? Why am I not as privileged as so and so.
And as our energy saps, we are almost inclined to accept whatever conclusion you are told. But however my friend, often times what we accept as answers to these questions are not the correct ones. Often, as Jesus said about the man born blind, “neither this man sinned nor His parents, but that the glory of God might be revealed.” Often times, we have played no part in the situations we face and the problems that come away; they have just come as a result of living in a fallen world and the problem itself is nothing more than an opportunity to see the love of the Father in action in our lives. Sometimes our role in our problems is more pronounced. If you sleep around, you may get an STI, if you smoke your chances of getting emphysema and lung cancers are a lot higher; that is just how some of these things work. A greater truth however is no-one deserves cancer or diabetes or HIV, no not one; it doesn’t matter if your lifestyle has been risky or you have made poor choices that have exposed you or allowed the virus to be transmitted to you-there is not a single sane parent who would punish a child for playing in the road by putting their legs beneath a moving 18-wheeler to teach them a lesson.
Which then brings us to the true answer to have whenever in our mind [now that we are believers in the death and resurrection of Christ] the question arises is simply that this problem, this challenge that I am facing, this “medically incurable” disease, this joblessness, the chaos of an environment I am in, is nothing more than simply an opportunity for the Father to display His love and glory for me in my life.
Selah
Be blessed.