“We are…….perplexed , but not driven to despair.”
(II Corinthains 4:8)
“Why me?” “I don’t get it!” “I didn’t ask for this!” Are these not some of the phrases we say when going through difficult circumstances? Difficulties have a way of blocking our ability to understand things clearly. Therefore, our trials appear to have very little or no purpose to them. I believe that’s why we try to figure out the cause for our present suffering. We tend to play being a psychologist and delve into our past to try to understand what is happening in our present. Sometimes we just want things to make sense.
So, how do we get a clear understanding of what is happening to us in our present circumstances? Well, first we need to think about the time we spent as a baby in the womb post birth. Yes, way back then. Before we were born, we spent approximately 40 weeks in that womb. And what did we do with our time of gestation between conception and birth? Well, of course, we would all say that we grew. Now think about how we grew for a moment. We developed eyes but we didn’t have anything to see, did we? We grew feet, but we had nowhere to walk to. We were given arms and hands, but we didn’t really have anything that we needed to hold on to in the womb. We received a brain but had nothing to think about while floating around in that large cavity. So, just what was the purpose for all that we acquired in the womb? Obviously, it was not for the womb. It was all in preparation for life beyond the womb. The womb prepared us for the world we would live in and navigate once we were out of that womb.
So now fast forward to our life today. We are alive and navigating not through a womb filled with fluid; but through a world filled with difficulties, temptations, trials, and uncertainties. A world that at times seems to have very little purpose to it. And here is the important thing we need to remember. Just as what we gained in the womb prepared us for the world; so now our physical life in this world is preparing us for heaven. God is getting us ready for eternity. What if I told you that this life was never intended for us to make sense of. Very much like what a baby was given in the womb was never intended for the baby to make sense of while still in the womb. What a baby receives in the womb is given to them to help make sense of life outside the womb. That means that all the “I don’t get it!” we experience in life isn’t intended to make sense now. It is all intended to prepare us to walk on streets of gold, to see and experience heavenly things, to worship with angelic beings, and most importantly to look upon our risen Savior.
The fact that things don’t make sense to us now, tells us that we aren’t home yet. But when we do get home we will all be saying……“Oh……now I get it!!!”
Darlene