Susan had a bad year. Susan had a really bad year. She lost a loved one, broke her leg, and was stuck in a wheelchair for months on end. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, she had to drive through a tornado to get help. Was it something she did? Was she being punished for something from her past? Not knowing, she decided to turn to the God she had learned about as a child and ignored as an adult.
Funny, it was all that bad stuff that caused her to start the conversation with God. She decided to read the Bible. It wasn’t as if she had never heard its stories before. Most everyone has heard the tales of the Red Sea crossing, the Commandments coming down from the mountain, and the baby in the manger. They just hadn’t meant that much to her. Then one day she was reading and this is what she found. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.” And this is what her heart heard as she was reading those words. “No matter how many bad things have happened to me that many good things can happen, too.”
Susan began to hope. Her heart began to grow. Her faith got some muscles. And when she had one last tragedy to face that year, she found she could trust in her future anyway. She learned that no matter what things look like in the present, they can be different, and better, in the future. When she told me her story almost twenty years later she was busy getting an award of excellence from her company and helping her son get ready to go off to college.
I’m hoping you get the message. Now is not the time to give up hope, no matter what things look like. No matter how many bad things have happened to you that many good things can happen too. Just ask Susan.