Where Was God?
Where was God when you experienced your deepest pain? Where was He in the room when your heart was dealt the most crushing blow? The one you thought you’d never recover from… Where was He when that person traumatized you? When that loss broke you? When it was all you could do just to function?
Pain is a force that carries weight like an ocean, power like the wind,
breaking sound barriers and shutting your world down in the blink of an eye.
As powerful as pain is, whether it’s physical or emotional, as much as it can rock your world, pulling up your roots and landing you in the middle of a desolate wasteland, being beaten with the rocks of every memory from what you’ve endured, I can say this…. God is more powerful than pain.
For every ocean of pain you’ve swam through, arms aching in exhaustion, face barely above the water, seemingly alone in the enduring, there is a reason the pain did not overtake you.
You were made to live.
Not by a thread. Not just barely. Not vaguely. You were made to REALLY live.
You did not make it through on the other side to live a dim, muted, lackluster version of life. Don’t be fooled by the counterfeit you think you deserve. Or accept it as an outcome of the pain.
He came so you could live life and live it more abundantly. John 10:10.
He did not allow you to survive what you did to only watch the rest of the world feast while you beg for crumbs at the table.
He protected you in ways you didn’t know.
He took the wounds of life, the battle scars, the depths of your pain, and rather than allow it to destroy you, He shaped the beautiful formation of you.
Others may not know it, but they are looking at His work when they see you.
The sculptures of the greatest artists of the ages that have withstood the test of time, have nothing on your being that was held in a Father’s hands, as He expertly crafted from the best and worst pieces of your journey, revealing the utter glory of a life he profoundly cherished.
Why? How? What cause?
I believe it was love…
The love you feel for a spouse, a child, a friend, or the person closest to you, is only a glimpse of His kind of love. If I had to guess at its description, in the simplest of terms, I would say it’s the deepest, tender, real, overwhelming feeling you’ve ever felt for someone, and then a million times that.
Let His love sink in that deep…
No matter the pain in your story, there is a love that was in the room when the worst happened. Love that has covered a thousand ages. A thousand stories. Weightier than the ocean, more powerful than the wind.
His love picks up the fragments of your heart after the worst wrongs done to you, and with one breath, reforms to perfection what was once lying as a heap on the pavement of your life.
Better than magic.
Better than a movie.
A real life miracle.
If you’re reading this, He’s gifted you with today. Don’t let that person, trauma, or wound, rob one more day of the gift of life that is yours. He’s peeled open your fisted palm, knowing you were ever determined not to receive what you feel you don’t deserve, and laid today inside.
So live. Enjoy. Be. Smile. Laugh.
and love <3 today.