How do we establish strong and healthy families in a world that has lost its way? Someone said it is like lighting a fire in the rain. Perhaps an apt analogy.
One sees lives unravel. One reads there is no such thing as wrong, that any chosen path is OK and if in some sense we say some action is wrong the causes of said wrong are beyond our control. Such analysis leaves us with no where to stand, and yet we all weary of plain rationality that chokes the very life out of us.
“The letter kills the spirit gives life.” To ask if that is true is to literally beg the question. We are stuck. We need both letter and spirit.
We all could give detail of broken lives that cross our paths. Most of us have seen it, or engaged it, or known it up close and personal. The pervasive reality of the Fall is ever with us. Yet there is hope.
Recently a friend expressed it something like this: “God sees the fallout of the Fall, how it touches all of our lives with pain and bewilderment, suffering, loss, tears. He is ‘touched with the feelings of our infirmities.’ And he does everything in His power to alleviate our pain, to the very extent of taking it all on Himself at the Cross.”
Yet we live in the “now and not yet.” He walks with us now, He has conquered sin, death and the grave, and some day in Him all will be made fully new. What do we do with pain and suffering now? How do we answer those who continue to embrace the way of the Deceiver? Offer Christ. If He is not the answer, there is no other.
“Christ have mercy.”
Bow down thine ear, O Lord, hear me: for I am poor and needy (Ps. 86:1)
Randy Huff and his wife lived for 5 years in Roanoke (Hollins) where they raised 2 sons. Randy served as Dean of Students at a Christian school and then worked in construction. For the last 9 years he has served as pastor of a church in North Pole, Alaska.