The Worst Day

 The "worst day of your life." I expect all of us could share something about having one of those. Each of us have a story about having such a day. The details may widely vary, but one thing would be common in all; pain. Deep, heart wrenching pain. Pain that seeks to bury and destroy us. More, we have no guarantees that such a day will not be exceeded by one that's even worse. More painful and more overwhelming. This would bring us to despair if it were not for one thing, One Person. Jesus. All else may be lost on that worst day. All else, but not Him. He'll be there, though in the trauma, we may not sense Him. But it's not our sense we're to rely on. It's upon Him, His Word, and His promised Presence. "I will be with you." In the valley of the shadow of death, He will be with us. On the worst day and on all the ones that follow.

What I write today flows out of a message preached some time ago. I spoke of the need for us to be deeply grounded in His truth, especially in this day of lies and deception. One of those truth's is what Larry Crabb calls "Resurrection Truth." We need to know the hope we have because of the truth and victory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is not a hope built upon the belief that we will never have a "worst day," but a truth that not even that worst day cannot defeat us or keep us from the One who lives and lives in and for us. He has already conquered death and all that the enemy would seek to accomplish against us in the midst of the chaos and pain that has come flooding in on us. Our hope is not in that He will keep such days from us, or even deliver us out of them. Our hope is that He is with us, working in us, transforming us even in the pain. Proving to us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that it is only the shadow of death, and shadows cannot harm us. I remember the day I began to learn this.

It was the day my wife left, taking my daughter with her, and, what felt to me like my entire life as well. As I watched her father load a truck with all the visible signs of our life together, I felt a despair so intense that I just walked away and went up the street a ways. I came to a graveyard and went in. It seemed an apt place to end up. With tears streaming and experiencing pain beyond anything I'd ever known, I cried out to Him. I received no answer nor any sense of His presence. Sometimes our pain is so great that we're unable to sense, feel, or hear anything but the pain itself. What did come was a thought, actually a choice. A choice that I knew later was from Him. It simply asked if I would choose to believe that even in this, even in this place of death, that He lives? That my life, no matter what circumstances screamed at the moment, was not over? In that graveyard, in my soul pain, I chose to believe.

That worst day was followed by many more bad ones. The valley of the shadow of death would be my environment for many days, weeks, and months to come.....but He would be my companion. The One who sticks closer than a brother. I would discover that in the worst of life I would still have the best of Him. In the midst of the pain He invited me into Himself. He invites you as well. The enemy would have had me to believe it all ended in that graveyard. It was not the ending but the beginning. The beginning of a life in Him I never knew possible. In our worst is His invitation to His best. Nothing can separate us from Him. Not even our worst day.

Blessings,
Pastor O