unfailing, unending love

often throughout the years i worked in full time ministry i would have people ask me, "why do bad things happen to good people?" sure, seminary definitely helps you to formulate the "right theological answer" but in real life sometimes people don't want to hear you rattle off a treatise on the problem of pain or how a good God can allow suffering in the world. they want to be able to look in your eyes and know that you get it...sometimes life isn't fair...sometimes people seem to have to endure much more than you could ever fathom they could endure. hurting, pain, suffering is unfortunately part of our life that we live in this broken, imperfect world. while they do still want answers to their questions, i think more importantly, they want to see that God's people hurt with them.

over the last few months i've been praying over and struggling through a very difficult situation that is happening in the lives of some of our family. cancer. what an ugly word from the start...a word that at it's very mention your life can seem as though it's shattering in a million pieces. hearing it spoken as a diagnosis in the life of a loved one makes you feel as though the rug keeps getting jerked out from under your feet. it can, in a moment, make you think that you have no hope. thankfully, i know that even in the midst of complete uncertainty, of dealing with things like life and death, and having to make important decisions about things that weren't even on your radar hours before a diagnosis that because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed {or destroyed or finished or at an end}. we are not consumed {or destroyed or finished or at an end} , because His compassions, His mercy, His goodness, His loyal love, His kindness, His favor not only never end but they never fail. Not only are they unending and unfailing but they are new...not just new every now and then or every quarter. His unending and unfailing mercies are new every morning.

what an incredible promise. God's love, compassions, mercy, goodness, and favor sustains us...it doesn't come to an end just because we have come to the end of ourselves and it doesn't fail us when everything else that we thought was certain in life fails us. we can't always know why bad things happen and sometimes i don't think we are meant to know. we can know for sure that even in the midst of all things uncertain, there is a God who is certain, who not only loves us but loves us with an unending, sustaining, unfailing love.

my hope, my peace, my security {thankfully} doesn't come from having all the right answers or even having answers period. my hope, my peace, my security is found only and completely in a God who has such a great love for me that it alone can sustain me. does knowing and experiencing this great truth of God's love eliminate the pain and the hurt? of course not. i think we can read lamentations 3:21-23 with the understanding that in the midst of suffering {that it's a given it will exist}, God's love will not fail you.

today i am asking the Lord to take my thoughts, worries, and fears captive and replace them with the knowledge that His great unending, unfailing love will sustain me and i'm asking Him to give me the opportunity as i share and carry the burdens of others to extend the same hope He has so graciously extended to me.