In a Boat in the Middle of a Lake: Trusting the God Who Meets Us in Our Storm

There is one thing we don’t want you to miss. We want to encourage you that our deepest hurt is also where our greatest hope emerges. While we experience pain and loss, those circumstances are also the fertile soil for new beginnings. For new life. For a new day.

Accepting hurt never means you are over the hurt. It means you’ve come to grips that this reality really is yours. It’s your boat. Your lake. You’re coming to terms with the fact that, with every death, there is new life.

This is one of the things that is so beautiful about this short and sad book of Lamentations. Right in the middle of the hurt and pain, there is the promise of new life. Like a protest to the pain, there is this proclamation of God’s goodness and the newness of life in him.

We know it might seem impossible to envision right now. We know there may be things we’ve lost that we’ll never get back. But biblical hope enables us to see differently. To see our pain, feel it, but not be consumed by it. To see through it and see God’s purpose for it.

Hope reminds us that our current reality is not our final reality.

“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope,” the writer of Lamentations says. This reality, this season, these circumstances, this hurt will not last forever. It doesn’t have to last forever. God wants to give you hope. His hope.

Here’s the good news. Even Jesus experienced pain; he entered pain for us and felt the weight of our pain in a way that we will never know. He lamented, cried, questioned, and even asked God to change the plan.

“Abba Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36).

Jesus accepted the pain and endured it. He was crucified for us. But he was also raised to new life for us. There was glory in the pain and glory on the other side of the pain.

There can be the same for you. Today. Right here, right now. It’s okay to not be okay.

This devotional by HarperCollins/Zondervan/Thomas Nelson is available at Bible.com. (MCN)