Heartache that won't stop hurting

Everywhere I look, I see pain.

Breakups. Heartaches. Miscarriage. Cancer. I hear about people killing other people, people hating other people. Disease and misery swallowing up lives and livelihood in short order.

The world is a painful place.

It seems that I can't log on to Facebook, read the news, look at my text messages, or talk to my friends without hearing about something else that happened to another human being that makes my heart scream out in pain. Pain for the changed futures, the broken hearts, the hurting people. Pain for the lost and the broken and the dying.

Everywhere I look, I see pain.

I've never lost a child, never lost a close friend to the jaws of death. But I have watched friends grapple with the reality that a loved one has slipped into eternity. And it hurts. Because life is short. Everybody knows that everybody dies. That no one lives forever. That all hearts are broken.

So what do you do when that reality hits home? When it's your heart on the line, your child that passes into eternity, your grandfather that is inching along to the next life? It's one of those things you don't know your response to until it smacks you in the face, leaving the coppery taste of blood in your mouth. What do you do when your world stops around you?

This world affords a lot of options. Drugs, alcohol, sex, to name a few. Things that lessen the pain. But that's all it is. When you come down from that high, you're left where you were before: broken, beaten, and defeated.

But there's something that does help. Someone who can change everything, can make that pain bearable.

His name is Jesus Christ.

So when I look around at the pain around me, the death and defeat that stains the air, I am held tight and secure in the arms of One who will not let me go. Who died so that I might live. And in those arms, I find peace and love and hope. Life doesn't cease to hurt. Bad things still happen. But they cannot destroy me, because the Creator of the universe is holding me.He gives life and hope and a promise His children will be reunited with each other in glory.

Everywhere I look, I see pain.

But in that pain, I see His promise and an opportunity for Him to work. The pain doesn't go away, but I know that as His child, someday, that pain will be a distant memory, completely outshone by His glory. I cannot wait.

But until then, I will lean on Him. I will trust in Him. I will spread His love to the lost, because the only difference between me and them, is Him.