The Lord Will Sustain Us
9.10.22
Through thick and thin, through blessings and the worst challenges, the Lord God Almighty will sustain us. I am facing cataract surgery tomorrow and again in two weeks, one eye at a time. As the date has come closer, I have seen how it looms in my mind. Most of my worry has not been about the surgery itself, but about the aftermath. How will I see with my two eyes when only one has been fixed? What will driving be like? And everything else? Recently, the Lord has sent several people who have had the surgery to me, through various circumstances, to reassure me that it will be fine. And, He has given me peace so I can detach from my worry. I am so grateful for His presence now and throughout my life, especially, during the time when my husband’s lymphoma came back, and two months later he died. He carried me through that whole passage. And through all the other rough patches of my life.
This support and presence is the help He promises us in this verse and many others: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” [Matthew 28:20] We can count on His presence, His purpose for us, His help with any difficulties, His support for whatever we have to go through. All we have to do is to pray, to lean on Him, to live in gratitude for all that He has done for us, in us, and with us.
Fear, anger, judgment, prejudice, worry, anxiety all disappear from view when we acknowledge God through our ongoing prayer life. He will not forsake us; after all we belong to Him; we are His children, the sheep of His pasture, the ones who have embraced Him with love and worship, who seek to follow Him wherever He would lead us.
Challenges or difficulties which our society rejects and obsesses about are actually some of the great blessings in our lives. Think back to the challenges of your childhood and youth, the ones of your adulthood. If we accept what life brings to us, if we can surrender to its being in our lives, then we will come, over time, to an understanding of what we were to learn from this challenge or that one. Take my husband’s illness and dying. There is no way I wanted that in my life, but I learned that God provided me with a depth of faith and His presence throughout the time, that I felt like I was standing on the rock of faith that Jesus described in Luke 6:46-49 throughout that time. And then, a few years after Hank’s death, He revealed my purpose to me. I had already become a spiritual director, but even more than that I am a blogger and author of four books which all are written through the eyes of a spiritual director: How do I, how do we live this life in Jesus Christ?
I no longer resent the challenges in my life or have to work at accepting them; I see them as blessings even more than the good things that happen to me. I live in gratitude for all the challenging things in my life—they have taught me so much about me and God and broadened my perspective beyond anything I was ever taught at home or in church or school or life. This Lord of ours is amazing and loving and forgiving and merciful and, oh, so helpful! Life here on earth is not easy, but He makes it so livable with His presence and love. At times in our lives–like what has been happening lately with Covid and global warming and all the anxiety in the world today–the Lord is the only thing available to us to counteract all this worry. He is the one who always has our best interests at heart and will help us not only survive, but thrive through it all.
I look to Paul for inspiration about how to survive everything—his opponents, his almost-shipwrecked boat, his time in jail and so much more. I look to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a 20th century man who spoke against the Nazi regime, who formed an underground church with others that wasn’t tainted like the churches that were taken over by the Nazi’s, who was imprisoned for his part in the rebellion against Hitler and was killed in a concentration camp just before the Allies could have freed him. All his time in prison his faith was converting the guards and prisoners there. He faced the challenges of His life like Paul did—being faithful to Christ. Both Bonhoeffer and Paul are great examples of the challenges of following Jesus Christ and thriving anyway. May our lives show such faithfulness and love! Amen!
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Questions to ponder over the week: Am I leaning on God more than ever today given the uncertainties and anxieties of today? Have I extended my prayers/prayer time to keep me from giving way to all the fears today? How am I coping with all of this? Is it God who is sustaining me or am I trapped in the worries of the world?
Blessing for the week: May we be the people of God who rely on Him totally to sustain us no matter what happens. May we be in His presence more and more every day. May we live in His arms, comforted and sustained by Him.
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Two Announcements
- I am giving away a 10-week journaling guide to Jesus’s Two Great Commandments. If you are interested, email me at patsadams@gmail.com and I will send it to you, free of charge.
- My latest books, “Called to Help the Poor and Needy” and “A Study Guide to the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount” are now in bookstores and on line. The first is about the more than 2,000 verses in the Bible which detail God’s instructions for caring for those in need. The second is a journaling/pondering guide to Jesus’s most complete sermon.