Life here on planet earth is not always easy. As we begin to know our current selves, we begin to see that we are flawed, those around us are flawed, and collectively ... well ... you get the point.
So often, we see things go well for some, and really poorly for others. When you read the news, there are so many people who suffer so greatly. As Christians, we want to believe that everything will be easy street for us, but really it is far from easy. "But I'm a Christian ... God will take care of me right?" Well, the answer is yes and no. God will certainly take care of us, but this does not always follow the path that we would imagine.
The reality is that we exist to serve God, not the other way around. God is not a grandparent who spoils his children. God's main job is not to orchestrate a storybook life for each one of us. God wants a relationship with us, he wants us to lean on him and find rest in him, and he wants us to be with him for eternity. Eternity is more important than an A on a test, a promotion at work, or a call back from that girl.
We assume that we understand exactly what we need and the way that things should work. But we are small in the vastness of everything, and frankly we don't have a clue. Timothy Keller noted, "God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows." Basically Keller's point is that the God of the universe knows a lot more than we do, and as we pray and ask for things, the things that we seek may not be what we would really want if we knew the outcomes. God uses each of us in so many ways, to do so many things, that we may never realize while on earth how many times we have been used to do God's work. How God directs our life, including the tough times, has purpose, even if we cannot comprehend the why.
C.S. Lewis noted, and I paraphrase, that we tend to drift away from God when everything is going well. God uses trials to pull us back closer. The tough times in our lives are a blessing and an amazing grace. God could let us drift off to terrible eternal conclusions, but he cares enough to pull us back in. Christianity is the only major religion / world view that looks at suffering in this way. The Bible shows us over and over how pain and suffering are used to bring people back to a closeness with God. These tough times are not punishments, they are blessings. In the short time that we are on earth, these tough times might be catastrophic and unbearable. I understand this. If we take the eternal view, we can use even the most catastrophic events to forge us into a stronger relationship with God.
Bottom line is that things do go bad and will go bad, even for Christians. God's job is not to pave our roads with rose petals and candy and help us avoid all pitfalls. In fact, God shows us amazing grace to pull us back towards him. At the moments when we deserve it the least, he is still right there, showing us grace and helping us back to him.
