Hard Times

As I said previously, I abhor the rabid and random of detailed postings of daily drama.  As such, I will not post any such thing.  I will just say that hard times are upon my family right now and muse about the proper response to hard times.

Over the course of my life, I have faced some very big challenges.  That goes for most of us.  While we expect good things to happen, and good things do happen, it is also true that bad things happen.  For some reason, we just don't expect bad things to happen to us.  Curious, isn't it?

If you've not experienced the death of a loved one, you will.  If you have not faced financial or vocational hardship, you will.  It is the nature of life.

When these times come, how should we respond?



I think it is a matter of perspective.  I wrote a bit about this in the post entitled "Lemonade or Mountains?"  Check it out.

Perspective has to do with the things that are important eternally vs. the things that are passing.  Pretty much everything is passing except God and our own souls.  Everything else will someday be gone, and many of the passing things will pass in our own lifetimes.

The human soul desires stability and security.  As such, we seek stability in a variety of places.  A good job.  A good partner.  A solid retirement plan.  A good house.  A social network.  Acquiring things.  The list is almost exhaustive.

But what lasts and what doesn't?

Jobs come and go.  People die.  Retirement plans can evaporate overnight.  Again, the list of tragedies is nearly exhaustive.

When tragedy strikes, humans commonly seek for meaning.  Why did this happen?  There must be a reason.  Not just a general reason, no, but a specific reason and meaning tailor made for us.  We tend to be selfish and self-centered about it.

When I hear someone asking "Why?," I always think of the story of Job.

It's a compelling tale told in the Old Testament.

If you're not familiar with the story, here's the Cliff notes:

Job, a righteous man, was the subject of a conversation between God and Satan.  God remarks that Job is a solid man with his faith in the right place, but Satan counters with the claim that it's easy to be righteous when things are going well.  Indeed, things were going very well for Job.  He was wealthy, had a beautiful wife and family, community respect, etc.

So, God and Satan enter into a sort of wager.  God would allow Satan to test his servant to see how he fared.  Tragedy then ensues.  Job ultimately loses everything.  His wealth, his family, his standing in the community, and his health.  His friends insist that he must have done something wrong to end up in such a state.  His wife betrays him and God.  She advises him to "curse God and die."

Through it all, Job stands his ground and remains God's faithful servant.

When it's all said and done, Job's position is restored to levels higher than before.  All is well.  He passes the test.

But, in my mind, the most important part of the story is yet to come.  After everything is good again, Job asks God what happened.  Why did this all happen the way that it did?  What was the purpose of it all?

I am tempted to think of this as a father.  If I were in God's position (and you may thank your lucky stars that I am not) I would have put my arm around my son's shoulder and said, "It was a test, son, and I'm so proud to say that you have passed.  It pleases me to no end that you have become the man that you are."

God, being God, says something slightly different.  "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth," he responds.  The gist of the response is that Job has no right to question Him.  To paraphrase, "How dare you question Me!"

Wow.  There's a lesson here for us all.  "Why?" is not the proper question.  If not why, then what should the question, if any, be?

I think that the question should be, "Who?"

As in, "Who are you God?"  "What are you really like?"  "How can I be closer to You?"

That's more like it, because, as we see in Job's example and from our own experience, things are fleeting but God is not.

God was there before the beginning, and He will be there after everything is finished.  He is the only eternal being and the only thing that matters.  Everything else is just a chance to learn something about Him and about ourselves.

So, we have a choice when hard times come.  Will we disintegrate, or will we ride the wave, enjoy the adventure, and, perhaps, learn something?  Will we gain some perspective about life and the changes that always come, or will we become bitter that things didn't go our way?

We do have a choice in the matter.  Our choice is not usually the one we want.  The choice we want is to be able to dictate the terms of our life, but that is often not available to us.  One choice we always have, though, is how we choose to view our own life circumstances.

It's a struggle, no doubt.  Our human selfishness tempts us sorely to be bitter and resentful.  To rage against the powers out of our control.  To be angry.  To lose our zest for life.  Life will certainly have it's tough moments.

However, we cannot allow ourselves to rage against the storm, for it will blow us away.  Nor can we run from it, for it will always find us.  The only reasonable choice we have is to recognize the temporary nature of it, learn what we can, become stronger, and remember Who is in charge of it all.  When we remember Who is in charge, we can lift our eyes away from our seemingly hopeless situation and cast them towards eternity and recall that our life is but a journey to the mountain that has been prepared for us.

Then we take one more step towards it.

Walking on,

TheCurmudgeon