Going through hell in peace

A lot of people go through tough times, some tougher than others.  Many people allow those tough times to determine how the rest of their life plays out.  Many people turn to drugs, alcohol, or crime and blame it on their childhood or the trials they went through in their teen years or their first failed marriage.  Some people become abusive in their treatment of children or spouse, some even criminally abusive, and say that it’s because they were abused as children.  In fact, we have a society that seems to find it difficult to hold anyone responsible for their actions.  That could be because they’re thinking they wouldn’t want to be in that position, or because they believe that outside factors pushed the individual to commit the act.  All kinds of excuses are made by those who do horrible things, and many accept those excuses as valid. 

Well, life is hard.  Bad things happen.  Every one of us is afflicted with something at some time or other in our life.  None of us gets to finish this life without having some kind of challenge or trial that just doesn’t seem fair or warranted.  As one of my college professors, who died of a brain tumor the year after I took his class, said, life isn’t fair, and we’re all going to hell in a hand basket.  That’s pretty much part of the deal when we’re born.  If we live long enough, something bad is going to happen to us.  The only way to avoid hardship of some sort is to die young. 

I think when my professor said the part about going to hell, he was talking about the things we were going to experience in this life.  He was actually a very moral and religious man.  I don’t think he thought he was on his way to hell for eternity.  He was going through his hell at that time with his health.  We didn’t know that.  We just thought he was in a really bad mood all the time.  Off the top of my head, I can’t remember what class I took from him.  I can’t remember anything he taught me other than life isn’t fair and we’re all going to go through some hell. 

So what’s the point?  Well, the point is that we can choose how we’re going to react to those horrific things.  We can let them embitter us.  We can become angry and hostile.  We can become poor pitiful victims.  We can lash out at others to make them as miserable as us or just because we don’t care if we make someone as unhappy as us.  Or we can allow our trials to bring out something good in us.  We can learn to forgive and to exercise mercy.  We can use our experience to help others who might face the same challenge.  We can use the trip through hell to build up our spiritual muscles as we fight to come out of the darkness into the light. 

Many people use their past as an excuse for wrongdoing.  I’m not going to give any examples of that, because I think everyone can probably think of many of those on their own.  I do want to share one example of someone who came through one of those terrible experiences and is going to use what she learned to help others.  Everyone has probably heard of Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped from her bedroom at knifepoint when she was 14.  She was raped and held captive in the woods for nine months before she was rescued.  I recently saw a story about her taking a job with a TV station to work on cases dealing with missing people.  It’s not her story that impressed me so much.  It was the picture I have posted below. 

She does not look like someone who has suffered something more horrible than I ever want my children to go through, worse than anything I’ve ever been through, worse than anything anyone I personally know has gone through, to my knowledge.  She looks like someone who has been blessed with the best things in life, someone who has been protected from the dirty, nasty things in this world.  She looks like she is one of the happiest people in the world.  She recently worked for a year and a half as a missionary, sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with people, giving of herself unselfishly.  She has overcome her nightmare and been blessed with the peace that only Christ can give us. 

 “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. ( John 14: 27)  “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33