Jeremiah 29:11
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

There are times when I just don’t get God and what he’s doing. I don’t understand the physical pain in my life (arthritic ankles), I don’t understand the emotional pain. I don’t understand what I see going on in others lives – the physical and emotional pain.

The Lord says He has plans for us: For you, for me. He has plans to prosper us (I’m betting not with worldly things), and not to harm us. It doesn’t look that way from here. There’s to much pain, to much wrong. God must not be everything He’s cracked up to be, or maybe God is a lie, an ancient superstition created by stupid people to try to calm the masses. (Heavy sigh) I guess were out here all by ourselves, us and our primordial soup ancestors.

Bull dung. Or ancestors weren’t any dumber or smarter than we are. The wisest man that ever lived was Solomon, right? 3000 years ago. They weren’t ignorant idiots any more than we are today.

We tend to take all the credit for good in the world and blame God for all the bad. How convenient, but it’s also a lie. I believe that hell is the eternal separation from God. Those that want God to ” take his shit show and go away” (from a discussion I had on FB with a friend if mine) will get their wish. See, God’s with us still, even if we don’t want Him with us. His love is still in our heart, is still in our soul, even when we reject him. But it won’t always be like this.

What we have today is God’s love trying to pop through the everyday choices we make and the malevolence the world has toward Him. His love is still there.

His plans for us, but we choose to go different directions. My pain would be minimized greatly if I lost 20 pounds. My emotions pain would be greatly reduced if I spent more time being present, engaged, in the word of God, not in my own head and protecting my fragile ego. I know others who spend all their time worrying about what to do: so much so that they don’t do what they need to in order to deal with the problem they are worrying about!

Is this pain, physical and emotional caused by God? No, but we pine “Oh God, why me? Take it away!” God must roll his eyes a lot.

There are other things that aren’t so easy to understand: Alzheimer’s at a young age, birth defects, cancer, losing a spouse, a parent, or a child before their time. I don’t know how those fit; they are deeply painful, and many times seem to be without reason.

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Heb 11:1). I have plans for you. I will not harm you. I will give you hope and a future. Those are promises from God. I have faith that they are true even if I can’t see it now.

We tend to get in the way of those promises here on earth. Maybe, I’m sure actually, that the promises are here for this earth but will never be fully realized because we get in the way. We can (and should be striving to, should be running to) realize more and more of these promises as we get closer to God. They won’t be fully realized until our next life though. But then, they will be realized forever.

The pain we experience grows us, stretches us, sharpens us, molds us, refined us. It gives us depth, compassion, tenderness, understanding, empathy. It either drives us closer to, or farther away from our Father, our God.

Pain is real, but it has a reason and a purpose. We might not understand it, but God does abd we will some day too. So for now, I accept the endearing pain to ensure enduring joy.

Faith.