A Light for My Path

In the Our Daily Bread devotional for October 7^th, Arthur Jackson talks about something Oswald Chambers wrote at the beginning of WWI. He references John 16:33 where Jesus warns his disciples of the “inevitability of peril.” Bad things will happen. Christ was specifically warning them about his upcoming arrest and crucifixion as well as the trials that most of them would face in the aftermath, as a consequence of being associated with Him.

Jesus didn’t say bad things might happen. He didn’t tell them it’s possible they could have a little trouble. He said, “In this world you WILL have trouble.” And even though Jesus was talking to His disciples, the “you” includes all of us. Every single one of us lives in a broken and sinful world. Every single one of us will encounter trouble, pain, and fear at some point in our lives. Jesus didn’t say this to scare us (or the Apostles); he said it to prepare us. But also, to bolster and comfort us. Because in the same breath he said “But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

I suspect the disciples didn’t exactly understand what Jesus meant at that point. Yes, they had seen Him perform miracles. They had acknowledged that He was the promised Messiah. They had witnessed the Pharisees’ growing antagonism against their friend and mentor. But they couldn’t have anticipated that in the span of just a few days they would watch their Teacher go from being hailed on His entry into Jerusalem to being accused, convicted, whipped and nailed to a cross.

Take heart? How?

It would have been easy in their terror and grief to forget the words “I have overcome the world.” Those three days between seeing Jesus’s lifeless body entombed and seeing Him alive again had to have been the longest days of their lives. And the scariest. “In this world you will have trouble.” What an understatement.

But Jesus is true to His word. He did overcome.

Some very troubling things are going on in our country and across the world right now. If you haven’t experienced something terrible, frightening, or heart-breaking yet in your life you will. I wish that weren’t so. I’ve lived through losing both parents, other family members, and friends. I’ve survived divorce and hurricanes. I had heart surgery when I was a child. All those events were scary and sad. Above all those, losing my younger daughter was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ll never get over outliving my own child. I take heart in knowing that because she believed Jesus overcame death, she is spending eternity in Heaven. But I can’t rest on my laurels and assume nothing else bad can happen to me. I still live in this world. There might still be trouble.

If darker days come again, I need to remind myself to take heart. He has overcome.

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Laura