Life Sucks

Life sucks.  Seriously.  And I’m not meaning in an emo sort of way.  It’s just true, a lot of things that happen in life suck.  There’s death, cancer, emotional baggage, poverty, war, and so many different evils in the world that just really suck.  It’s impossible to get away with not being affected by these things in some way, even if you don’t experience them personally.  Sin has pretty much ruined our world.

So what do we do?  Well, I can’t account for everyone, but I know what I do.  I have one thing that I take comfort in that is the only thing that keeps me sane.  Jesus.  

Some people might be rolling their eyes by now and scoffing at that, thinking I’m just a kid who doesn’t know what “life sucking” really is or someone that’s been brainwashed.  Well, think what you may.  The awesome thing is that God has control over that.

You see, Jesus has two characteristics that I absolutely adore that kind of make everything better, or at least bearable.  Most people right now would be guessing that one of them is His love.  Jesus’ love is a great and mighty thing, a freaking sweet characteristic of His, but it’s not what I’m referring to here.  You see, beyond all of Jesus’ characteristics including love, kindness,  justice, acceptance, grace, and majesty (as well as many others), His righteousness and sovereignty are what keep me going through all this crap on earth.

Jesus reigns over everything, including Satan.  Satan, demons and the effects of sin cannot do any work without Jesus’ consent.  (I know I’ve lost a lot of you here, but just hang in there with me).  The best example I can think of here is the story of Job in the Bible.  Pretty much, he’s a great guy.  He does everything he’s supposed to, his family is full of believers and all of his children are just as successful as he is.  Then at one point, Satan asks God’s permission to mess with Job and see if he will turn on God.  The twist is, God consents.  The rest of the story is Job’s life falling to pieces and neither his friends nor his wife, as much as they try to “help” him through it, can help him at all.  They try to figure out what Job did for all of this to happen to him and blame him for committing sins.

Job was amazing in the fact that he never turned on God, and he didn’t listen to his friends or his wife.  He did mourn the deaths of the people in his family, the loss of his livelihood, and the decline of his health (heck he even got angry at God), but then he continued to praise God. He definitely wasn’t perfect (come to find out a lot of the good things he did were done because of selfishness).  Overall, Job dealt with things as they came in a fairly appropriate (although human) way.  Embracing the fact that everything that happened sucked, but also that God must have a reason.

In the end, God had a heart to heart with Job.  Job asked God why He did the things He had to Job.  God’s answer?  It isn’t for Job to know everything that God is doing, even in his life.  As callous as this may sounds, it makes so much sense!  Was Job there when God created the earth?  Was he there when God breathed life in to man?  Not at all.  Job is part of God’s creation and God is sovereign over all.  What He does is His business.

The question comes up here, then why believe in God?  What stops Him from doing evil things to people all the time just for kicks and to play with people, kind of like a kid with a magnifying glass on an ant hill.  That’s where God’s righteousness comes in.  God is righteous and so does everything for some sort of reason, even if we never understand what that reason is.  

God did not make the world evil and sinful.  Everything crappy that happens to us comes down to the fact that there is sin in the world.  What God does is He takes the sin that is meant for evil and then uses it for good.  We may not ever see the good that comes out of it, but it does.  Just look at Joseph with his brothers.  First they try to kill him, then they sell him off into slavery.  As his life gets better and he moves up as a top slave, he is then thrown into jail because of some false accusations from his owner’s shady wife.  After he’s in jail he helps save a royal servant who was put in there, and then waits years before he is ever repaid for that favor.  Then, he is taken out of jail and after some pretty sweet dream interpretations and helping the Pharaoh, he is elevated to a monumental status in Pharaoh’s house and even saved Pharaoh's people from a famine.  In the end, he’s able to help his good-for-nothing brothers who caused all of this super crappy stuff to happen in the first place and does it with joy.  When his borthers finally realize that it is Jacob who is helping them, they understandably ask him why he would do that after everything they’d done to him.  His answer?  In Genesis 5:20 he says, “...you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

Jacob completely got the whole concept.  God allowed those things to happen to Jacob.  They were terrible and in God’s love for His children and compassion for us, I’m sure that it hurt him to see those things go down.  But because of what Jacob went through, he was able to save a whole land from a famine and have enough influence on the Pharaoh to keep his family alive as well and therefore go on to create the 12 tribes of Israel that would eventually produce Jesus Christ.  

Jacob went through the motions and made everything that he did count.  He trusted that God had great things in store for him.  It seemed impossible in the way his life was turning, but God came through!

Trusting in God’s sovereignty over everything, including my personal life, is what I cling to when things go all craptastic on me.  I may never know why something has happened, but I can trust that it is part of God’s will and that He takes what is sinful and meant for evil, and will use it for good in some way because He is righteous.  In that righteousness He is loving, full of grace, and bearer of justice.  

Knowing these things doesn’t keep me from getting upset or shield me from noticing when bad things happen.  I’ve got my “Debbie Downer” moments and times when I just don’t want to exist anymore because things hurt so bad (kind of reminiscent of some of King David’s Psalms).  That’s when God reminds me of those two characteristics of His.  He is sovereign and righteous.  Remembering that gives me a sort of peace that can only come through Him, and I realize that even though life sucks, I really can get through anything as long as I do it through Him, and that’s when I can’t help but worship and praise Him.  

I don’t have to like every situation or even think that it’s fair.  I just have to remember that fair doesn’t come in to play in a broken and sinful world.  God will morph evil into good, and His presence on the earth actually gives us the taste of what good is, rather than left being encompassed with evil.  He really is a great and mighty God.  He is righteous and sovereign.  He brings the only justice the world sees, and grants grace on His people.  Even in the harsh, sucky, craptastic parts of life, I find contentment and peace when in Him.  

HALLELUJAH!  Jesus, you freaking ROCK!