Devotion


Can You Really Get Ready for the Inevitable? C





an you get ready for the inevitable? I think the comic Beetle Bailey does. I think he knows deep down that before the day passes, Sergeant Snorkel is going to beat him up. But, that is in cartoons. What about in real life? Can you really get ready for the inevitable? In some things yes, but only to a point.


Take grief, for example. The pain of losing one we truly love can seem unbearable. A friend of mine who lost her broth-


er wrote, “I never knew that such intense pain could exist.” Many of you have been there. You know all about the sleepless nights, the dryness of mouth, the absolute loneliness. The least little memory and your eyes suddenly well up with tears, again. You know, by personal experience, what it’s like to grieve. But, can you really prepare for it ahead of time? C.S. Lewis, a Christian author and lecturer, lost his wife to cancer. When he wrote of her death, his opening words were, “No one ever told me…” Donald Howard, a minister in Australia also lost a wife to cancer. In his work, Christians Grieve  I was ill-prepared for grief, for ‘No one ever told me…’” Grief comes to us all at various times and for different reasons. And the problem with grief is that you can’t wade into


 one choice – sink or swim! If there’s any way to get ready for the inevitable, it is to learn to walk each day in the presence of Christ. As you learn to lean on Him in the little things from day to day, you won’t have to wonder where He is when the big things come. Jeremiah asks the right questions. “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, then how can you com- pete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, how will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?” (Jeremiah 12:5) No one can walk through grief until it comes. But, if you know what it is to hold the Shepherd’s hand in the daytime, you can rest assured He’ll hold yours in the dark.


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