Life is this surprisingly beautiful conglomeration of suffering and delight…pain mixed with pleasure…dreams fulfilled and hope deferred. The question hangs in the air…can we really call where we live a *pleasant place*? Is it possible that beauty threads thick through our deepest sorrows? When tears become our food and all our skies are painted gray are the seeds falling soft from cotton trees and skies lit gold by God’s faithfulness balm enough for our souls? Are little things like…the crinkles in the corners of her eyes…her face all scrunched up in smile, his small hand tugging on mine toddling, watching that firstborn break in his first baseball glove is this gift enough or do I demand more? More goodness without any pain, more joy without any grief.

Would I demand heaven of God apart from Him?

I long for His kingdom yes with all my heart. But do I long for ease and pleasure and comfort and no struggle more than Him? The kingdom is here but oh is it ever coming! Don’t we see that quite possibly our wishing away every difficulty every trial is our resisting His way…our own resistance of His will? Wasn’t it the will of the Father to crush His own Son and isn’t it the will of the Father that we share in the Son’s sufferings?  And not just that we might share in His sufferings but also that we might share in His glory? Will we take His good along with the unbearable hard things? We will really live as Christ?

…if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. Romans 8:17

Is life just for comfort or for those of faith is it really a good  FIGHT? And if it’s a fight doesn’t that entail suffering? Could it be that our lives…this world where orphans die, depraved men binge on sin…this world where mom’s tempers fly too quick, where husbands strive to provide but the ground just keeps on yielding thorns….could this place yield God ordained suffering and God ordained beautiful gifts and isn’t there beauty in it all? In every shred of this incomparably hard and good life, isn’t it all given that we might take hold of Him?

Can we say on the hard days, and on the hard days yet to come…

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. Psalm 16

I am bold of enough to think so.