Alone on planet earth? - Why are we forsaken ?

Someone was talking to me today about feeling alone and depressed, feeling so ill all the time and wondering if God really cares. Does His promises only apply to other people? And then feeling guilty for questioning and having such thoughts which she equated with lack of faith ---- Here is what I replied:

I don't think there is a one of us who haven't had our times of feeling just like you are now, wondering how God can care about us yet seem so far away and so silent. Then we look around us and hear about Suzie and Joan who don't seem to have a care in the world and when they do they seem to get instant deliverance from them. Why not I ? we ask. Sometimes life sure doesn't seem fair.

Just today I was talking to a lady who has FM who thinks of herself as a Christian but doesn't seem to quite understand all that Christianity is about. I was telling her that sometimes it seems that our sufferings are actually for someone else's benefit. Now doesn't THAT sound crazy?! But if you stop and think about it I think you'll note that most of us have had some friend, some family member who knows how in pain we are etc and wonders what it is that keeps us going ---and THEY see God's presence. Sometimes while we feel like we're a burden to others it is exactly just that, that the person needs to be challenged with / tested with at that moment. Sometimes it's a church that Jesus is asking "Do you love me? Do you really love me? Take care of my lambs.". Sometimes it is a spouse or a parent.


But seldom is God talked about that way today. Instead most prefer to hear about a candy coated God who dispenses happiness, money and fun stuff at our every whim instantly. They do not understand that as unjust as it seems to us it is the place of a man's soul/ heart that He is most concerned about. Building hearts and love takes exercise just like muscles and when I look around me at today's world I see a lot of wimpy muscles out there... lack of compassion and grace for one another, lack of concern for the weaker ones. Who could those who love the Lord learn about laying down one's life for his brother, giving when it has to come from something more than out of one's excesses, go out of their way to do for another when it isn't to their convenience?


We are the sick and infirm, the poor and the needy. we didn't choose to be. We didn't declare it or demand it and surely didn't desire it. We just are. But perhaps in God's world it takes both... those who are called to give and those to whom things need to be given??? For who could they help out if there aren't those who need helped?

Just yesterday when my daughter was stressing the heck out of me I got a jolt in my head that said "patience! you're learning patience". I said "what??!!! just how much am I supposed to need?" He said "more than you have!". And the thought came to me "love the unlovable. It's easy to love the loveable! ... " and I thought surely I want and need unconditional love and of course we think of God as the One who is probably the only being who truly have unconditional love for us... Parents come in there second. Of course I knew I loved my daughter no matter what she does. She's my daughter. But this new notion of loving the unlovable... Sometimes she does seem a bit unlovable considering her behavior towards me... Perhaps I needed her (a daughter like she is) to teach me a thing or two to make me better???


Maybe sometimes we are the fruit stressors?

(fruit testers? aka our being around exposes the imperfections in of those fruits...as in "you will know them by their fruits")

zona