FROM THE PULPIT: HOW SHOULD CHRISTIANS HANDLE BAD BREAKS?

It seems every life is prone to hardship, frustration, suffering, and just plain rotten luck. We all suffer, some to greater degrees than others.

No one escapes difficulty, and a Christian faith does not insulate a person from tragedy or the inequitable consequences of unjust people. That's life!

But the key to joyful living is not in what happens to us, but what we do with what happens to us. We can't change our circumstances but we can control our attitudes of how we respond.

Serenity comes from knowing what we can change and what we can't, with the wisdom to know the difference.

Joy comes from knowing that God has a purpose to, and a redemptive benefit in, our suffering.

So how do we handle the inevitable frustrations and crisis that come our way? One way is to ask the tough questions. There is one group of people who respond to tragedy and suffering by asking all the "why" questions.

One might call them the "why-ners." It is a natural human response to seek some justifiable cause and effect relationship regarding our suffering. However, the "why" questions have no answer. Even Jesus didn't share why innocent people suffered (Luke 13:1-6)

Job never received the answers to his questions either.

A second group of people are the stoics. Named for a Greek philosophy, these are the people that simply grin and bear it. (I'd rather smile and change it.) These are the hardy souls that take their bad luck as the "good soldier." They simply take it and move on. After all, you can't change life. It just happens.

Another way to take the hardships is the like "The Murphy's." These are the people that expect bad things to happen, and if anything can go wrong, they'll tell you, in advance, how it will go wrong. If misery loves company, they never feel lonely. When bad things happen, they'll say, "I knew life was too good to be true."

Yet the Christian response isn't necessarily to question why, though we often ask. Nor are we to mask our frustration like a "good soldier," and I don't imagine us lamenting hopelessly how we are prone to despair, even if the circumstances justify it.

Paul shares how suffering has a benefit. It produces perseverance, patience and endurance. Perseverance produces character, and character, in turn, produces hope. The good news is that hope does not disappoint us. (Romans 5:1-11)

We all need hope, but hope comes with a great price. Hope originates and emerges through the painful events in life. Hope is a process that takes time. Sadly, we often give up too soon before God brings our hope to the point where it helps us gain an eternal perspective on life. Hope is what keeps us going.

It's been said, "Don't curse the darkness when we've been promised the light." When we're deep in the darkness of this troubled world, know that God is at work. Ask God how he's using this experience to develop hope in your life.