Our days can have the following …sometimes all at the same time:
Bad things, good things, pleasure, pain, suffering, victory, abundance, lack, joy, sorrow, increase and loss. Love, abandonment health, illness. Some imposed on us randomly others intentionally by others. All jumbled together.
Pleasure doesn’t make up for pain and suffering, though many seek it out for that.
On the west coast lack of rain is making fires rage destroying people’s homes.
In my area so much rain is causing flooding taking out my families homes.
For many people around the world the bad massively outweighs the good, and for others it seems the good greatly outweighs the bad. No apparent rhyme or reason other than luck.
The bad can consume us with anxiety or worry or resentment. Too others too much good has made them haughty and high minded toward others.
The good and bad details can consume us, pursuing good and avoiding bad become many people’s lives mission. They use money to fill as much as possible with pleasure, some are great at this, others not so much.
But anxiously pursuing the good and the pleasure to flee from and to outweigh the bad is a waste, it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of our situation.
The Christian is like a dual creature one foot in heaven one foot on earth. Jesus Christ is displacing Satan in the earth, he has started a cycle of death and resurrection that we all experience. This cycle results in suffering, pain, and trouble, but he results in life and abundance and joy.
Humanity is caught up in that cycle of death and abundant life resurrection. It’s all jumbled together.
No matter how good or bad our outward situation or circumstances. Jesus is the door to the next realm that makes it all almost irrelevant. With Jesus we can live with one foot in heaven and one foot on earth …right now, in the midst of suffering and loss or abundance and gain. Could go either way.
With him as the foreground to our lives the good or the bad details begin to fade and almost become irrelevant. Anxiety and resentment just sort of wash away. As do haughtiness and the pride of life.
