The world can look stunningly beautiful from the vantage point of 35,000 feet. But in that world, as it is now, there is pain amongst the beauty.

Much of our suffering cannot in any way be circumvented. 

The reality of the matter is that we live in a terribly fallen world of our own making. Our corporate and individual pain is the deserved result of our race’s rebellion against our Creator and His perfect order. 

This is a hard reality, and human beings have a tendency, sinful in itself, to avoid reckoning with it at any cost. But it is only in reckoning with it that we can both live in the truth and find a loving God’s way of deliverance from the results of our disobedience to Him.

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:3-5 ESV

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