What to Do in Hard Times

I really appreciated Ann Voskamp's post this week entitled "What to Do in Hard Times" and feel it was very appropriate given our family's week of mourning and celebration...mourning the death of our son, Warren, at 19 days old.  And also celebrating his life...the gift of 19 days with him and the gift of his full, glorified life in heaven, and his life that we will someday share in when we arrive there.  

I encourage you to read this blog entry.  Here are a few excerpts that truly blessed me and I hope bless you:

God seizes the days: God seizes time and uses it as an instrument to transform. God seizes every moment to sculpt souls and shape lives and transform ashes into glory. What if isn’t so much about seizing kairos moments and surviving chronos moments — but seeing all as Christ-filled moments? That God seizes the moment to make me more like Christ and what if I seized more of the moments, because there is something of my Savior in them?

What if all that mattered was to live with the scars of the unanswered questions, leaning into the answer —leaning into the God with the scars deep in His side and my name nail etched into the palm of His hand? Our wounds may be our unanswered questions — answered only by the wounds of our God.

To wrestle with God because the hard times are holy times. To not escape time, but stubbornly, fully embrace time, because this is how we stay engaged with God. When we don’t know how to hang on in hard times, to just grip hard to God. The only ones who can rest in God are the one who have wrestled with God… I will not let you go until I you bless me. That is what the pastor said: There is no tighter embrace that the grip of a wrestle.