Beautiful Promises

In the Bible, God talks about how He makes all things new, and He works all things for our good, and He makes all things beautiful in His time.

Those are wonderful promises, and they can be really difficult to believe when life gets hard. How could God possibly use all of this pain for good? How could He take something so ugly and make it beautiful? How could He make this situation new, when everything is going wrong?

Living on the mission field, I see so much injustice, so much violence, so much pain, so much suffering, so much darkness, and it´s hard sometimes to reconcile all of that with my faith.

But you don´t have to be a missionary to feel that way. Maybe under these conditions it´s more obvious, but we all see plenty of darkness in our own lives. It can make us depressed or angry, it can even make us question God´s goodness or His sovereignty.

But something I´ve learned through experience is that even in the darkest moments, God is present, and so is His goodness.

I have watched as children we work with have buried their mother, and as a mother buried her child. I have seen children who are bullied, children who are abused and molested, I have seen drug addict fathers steal from their own children to feed their habit, I have seen children sick from malnutrition. I miscarried a child of my own, and I have watched my own family change in ways I never wanted it to change. I have seen so much darkness.

But the amazing thing about darkness is that it is so weak. One tiny light defeats the most overwhelming darkness, and I have seen so much light!

I have seen true joy on the face of a child who has lived through terrible grief. I have seen real love in their eyes even when they have not been loved in their homes. I have seen them share even though they don´t have anything. I have seen children who didn´t even know how to dream begin to share their hopes for the future. I have seen children who were violent become star students. I have seen redemption and faith and love and joy beyond measure.

And that is why I know that these promises in the Bible are true. God does not rejoice in our pain, but He does redeem it and turn it into something else, if we can be patient and trust Him. There is no darkness that the smallest light cannot defeat. We live in these promises daily, and whatever you are going through, I pray that you can find hope in them, too.