...On The Difficult Days

March 11

May a thread of comfort be woven through your difficult days.- Mary Anne Radmacher

We don't want difficult days. We want days of comfort and leisure and prosperity and joy. We want days that overflow with life's good things. But the reality is that difficult days come. In fact, the delight of good days is most often interwoven with the difficulty of unpleasant days. Life is rarely a solid cloth but a balanced pattern of both.

Much as our plates must have a bit of carbohydrate, a bit of protein...so our daily emotional fare includes a bit of sunshine, a bit of rain (Matthew 5:45). As the Word states in Ecclesiastes 7:16, "Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over-wise, for why should you destroy yourself?" The point seems to be that preoccupation with doing all things right, attempting to have the answers to all difficulties, will result in failure and disappointment! Our solution is to leave these things with the Lord, for only He is our righteousness. Only He is our truth. Only He is our reality. Only He is our joy. Only He is the answer to our every need!

In Paul's letter to the Corinthians he discusses the topic of moral and spiritual failure. He has addressed a fault that has been found among the people. But he goes on to say, "...if I make you sorry, how can I be glad?...so I wrote to you with many tears that you should not be grieved, but rather that you should know my abundant love...and forgiveness and comfort...lest satan should get an advantage," II Corinthians 2:2-11. The point is, be righteous, be wise, be godly and upright, but if failure comes, if temptation assails and sin overtakes, be mindful of the reality that only Jesus has conquered sin! Only Jesus is holy! Only Jesus has the covering for our sin. We don't have it on our own.

And if others fail us, must we not forgive them? How can we hold them to a standard no man can achieve without Jesus? Our responsibility is not to condemn but to identify the wrong and then forgive it. Paul says the only one who is advantaged when we hold a grudge is the devil. How so? Because when we deny ourselves any opportunity to be like Jesus, we are robbed of His blessing! The enemy of God, the enemy of our soul, would have us to be bound in doubt, fear and unforgiveness. Why?

The evil one desires that we compound the difficulties of our days with disobedience. If he can cause us to cling to doubt, he has undermined our faith. If he can cause us to cling to despair, he has undermined our hope. If he can cause us to cling to unforgiveness of others, he can undermine the forgiveness from sin we have received from our Savior. If he can cause us to reject love and embrace disdain, he can blind us to the great love Jesus holds out to us! Because the Lord has forgiven us all things and delivered us from every negative thought (“God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of wisdom,” II Timothy 1:7) He will empower us to employ the gift of forgiveness.

So, let us receive the thread of comfort that the Lord weaves through our difficult days. Let it create a fabric for our lives that is strong, that is impossible to rend. Let us evidence Christ in our days of comfort and pleasure as well as in our days of trial and frustration, for HE IS LORD OF ALL! Let us "walk by faith, not by sight" (II Corinthians 5:7) into the comfort He provides every day to those who will appropriate it. Let us hold tightly to Jesus—especially on the difficult days.