“God, where are you? Why haven’t you done ____________ for me yet?”

Have you ever asked a question like that before? I know I have.

I thought that following God and being a Christian would lead to a life that was kind of easy, filled only with joy, free from pain and sorrow.  Silly me.  

I’m not even sure where I got that idea but when I ask around, I find that most of the Christians I know have believed (or still believe) some version of that.  After all, it sounds good, doesn’t it?  It’s so appealing, this thought that if you are a true believer you are spared suffering.

It is also completely contrary to what the scriptures teach.

A little boy and a little girl were singing their favorite Christmas carol in church the Sunday before Christmas. The boy concluded “Silent Night” with the words, “sleep in heavenly beans.”
His sister elbowed him, and said, “No. Not beans, peas!”

I think this can sum up how many of us feel by the time we reach Christmas, the song might just as well end with beans or peas instead of peace. Because sometimes in the frantic rush to get everything done, the peace of the season seems to elude us.

I think the deepest kind of pain ever had in my life is relational pain. There's a lot of hurt that we all experience in life. But there's something about relational pain that can hurt so deeply that it's really hard to let go. 

Maybe you are in a relationship that is falling apart right now. And in that process, someone has hurt you in such a way that it feels like it would be impossible to ever rebound from that situation.

Maybe you were betrayed (a friend repeated a secret), abandoned (a spouse/parent left you), or trust was broken (there was an affair).