"When Bad Things Happen"
Now therefore, our God, the great God, mighty and awesome, who keeps his covenant of love, do not let all this hardship seem trifling in your eyes
(Nehemiah 9:32).
God is great, mighty, awesome, bound to His people by a covenant of love. And His people endure hardship. Those two statements have puzzled plenty of better minds than mine.
They strike at the heart of the perennial question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” The question changed from academic to personal for me one hot July day. Not that I thought of myself as “good” when both my children were taken from my custody. I could only ask forgiveness, begin the long road back to mental and emotional health, and trust God’s love to make things right in His time.
Day by day, God revealed himself to me through His Word. I heard a preacher say, “God’s heart was the first to break,” and I knew God didn’t regard my hardship as trifling. His might and love proved themselves to me in the midst of my trials. Whatever hardships lie ahead of me, I know none of them will be trifling in God’s eyes—because He loves me unconditionally. He proves His covenant in the midst of those hardships and is forming me through them.
As the great preacher Henry Ward Beecher put it: “We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.” God, open my eyes to all You are, and all You wish me to be, during every hard time that comes my way. Your covenant of love is everlasting. In Jesus’ name, amen." :angel:
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Standard Publishing's "Devotions For The Seasons"
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