August 9, 2020
College Faith Journey
Abby Klare
Time spent laughing in the backyard with family, a long walk and good cup of coffee shared with a close friend—in these moments it really is easy to see God’s goodness. In these moments, it’s easy to have faith and to trust Jesus and what we believe to be His promises. Life is full of good days, spent with those we love and experiencing the many joys this world has to offer.
Until it’s not.
In between those good days can be really hard ones. Days marked by suffering, grief, or disappointment. On the hard days, it can be tempting to ask ourselves—if God really is good, why does He allow for such hardship? This year alone has brought many people face to face with that question in ways we never could have imagined. So, when plagued by this doubt, what are we as people of faith to do? First, before we question God’s commitment to us, we should ask ourselves how well we really understand His promise.
We are not the first people to doubt God’s goodness; plenty of biblical heroes asked the same questions thousands of years ago that we continue to ask today. Moses was filled with doubt when responding to the Lord’s call to deliver His people from Egypt. He saw the suffering of the Israelites in captivity and wondered not only how God could let it happen, but even more, how he could possibly be the one to lead them to freedom. The Apostles wondered too—everywhere they went spreading the good news of Jesus, they were met with persecution by the Roman empire. Against this backdrop of a truly broken, fallen world, where was the Lord?
In the examples above, and in our own lives amidst our daily suffering, the Lord has far from abandoned us. In fact, He is doing exactly what He promised, so long as we let Him. When Moses expressed his doubts to God about his ability to lead the Israelites, the Lord did not answer by assuring Moses it would be easier than he thought, or that Pharaoh would just bend to his will. Nope, that’s not what God promised. Instead, what He promises is that He will be with us through our hardships.
Simply put, God doesn’t promise us that because He is good, our lives will be easy. In fact, He goes as far as to tell us that because we choose to follow Him, our lives will actually be pretty tough at times. Moses led God’s chosen people out of slavery. The Apostles, the men who lived and walked with Jesus, were persecuted and even put to death for spreading the gospel. And us? Well we aren’t as different as we might think we are from Moses or St. Peter. Every day as followers of Christ, we are tasked with living in a world that is full of suffering. It can be hard, frightening, and at times possibly lonely. But in those moments of personal weakness, God’s goodness is truly at its strongest, because His promise is realized: He is with us.
Isaiah 41:10 tells us the following:
Fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
It’s wonderfully easy to trust in God when life is full of sunshine and smiles. It’s much harder to do so when life is plagued by storms and raging seas. In those storms, when fear leads us to doubt, we are called to consider God’s promise that in Him, we find more than comfort; we find strength. In Him, we find courage to overcome, anchored by His promise that He is with us, always.