The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. – Psalm 34:18
It is right to mourn over loss. It is appropriate to grieve over injustice. It is fitting to hurt over broken relationships. It is correct to lament over bad test results. It is proper to feel pain over rebellious children. It is reasonable to ache over personal mistreatment or persecution. While there is a lot of beauty in this world, it is also plagued with much brokenness. Sin has touched everything with its destructive contamination, and things do not operate as God originally designed. We have all experienced the pain of things gone wrong. Christians aren’t exempt from hurt. No matter what precautions we take to safeguard our lives, no matter how hard we work at being godly people, no matter how diligently we screen who and what we allow to get close to us… something will inevitably come uninvited, unannounced, and unwanted into our lives and cause us pain. Yet… Healing will come. Comfort will come.Justice will come. Restoration will come. Deliverance will come. Joy will come. Salvation will come. Eternal life will come. This is all true because Jesus has come. He has come to join us in our suffering, indeed suffer in our place on the cross so that one day we can enter into a place where there is no suffering at all. He made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can someday witness the undoing and remaking of all that sin has tainted. Until then, He journeys with us, always cheering, always lifting, always strengthening, always guiding, and always providing all we need. We are sometimes left without answers, but we are never left without hope. Because we are never left without Him. Take heart and trust Him as you press on down the road that He has marked for you to travel, for the day will come when He will put an end to the hurt you experience along the way. I cannot say when the road will end. I do not know what is around the next bend. I only know that the road leads home.
