Beyond What You Can Bear

This week has been a difficult one for many people I love. I feel like I've been hearing one piece of bad news after another and I've spent many nights this week, lying awake, thinking about the hurting lives and precious faces of my friends. Illness, brokenness, sadness, dreams being shattered and lives forever changing...It's crazy how life's ability to change drastically from one day to the next can be both exciting and terrifying...motivating and paralyzing.

A lot of people misquote the bible and say, "I know God won't put me through anything I can't handle" when that's not what the bible says...
The bible says that God will not tempt you beyond what you can bear...but be assured, life will give you plenty more than you can bear on your own...Enter: God's strength.

God's strength is perfect in those moments when it's all just too much.

I've been watching "The Biggest Loser" and there is a contestant on this show who's husband, pre-school aged daughter and six day old son were killed in a car accident a few years ago. Every time I see that woman on my TV screen my throat swells with emotion. How do you live through that? Certainly that isn't beyond what one can bear without super natural strength?

I'm reading a book about a man and woman who's child was born and lived only for a few brief seconds. 6 months later, their 5 year old daughter died unexpectedly in her sleep from a rare heart deformity that they didn't know she had. How can a human muster up the strength to deal with that kind of trauma? We can't, not without the hand of God.

How does a wife pick herself up off of the floor after the man who vowed to love her forever, wakes up one morning and says, "I'm sorry, I don't love you and I don't know if I ever did."? By the strength and grace of God. How does a small child continue on after being abandoned by his parents? By believing that God is his father who loves him unconditionally. How does a person in chronic or terminal pain, accept that God is a God of love and healing? By remembering the pain that Jesus endured for them.

In the book, "Things Unseen", Mark Buchanan explains that life doesn't justify living...how can it for those who seem to suffer from start to finish? Heaven, God's promise and His hope of life eternal with Him is what justifies living.

In the midst of death, illness, unfaithfulness, broken hearts and crushed dreams, God is ready and waiting to mend the pieces and make them stronger and more beautiful than ever before.