If He took it all away - I will praise the Lord.

A friend sent me an e-mail link to a song, so I headed off to Youtube looking for it. It was a beautiful song that really captured my attention as did the pictures that happen to be shown for the video background.

I tend to see a persons pain through a magnifying glass. I see a struggling pastor and pull out the magnifying glass and look at it, specifically it and nothing else and grieve his pain. I see a hurting child, out comes my magnifying glass and again, I focus entirely on that one thing. I do the same with my own far too often as well.

But that video proved to me a very good reminder of something I'd known before but forgotten.
Our pain isn't ours alone. Sure it's slightly unique to us, but for the most part it's the same pain that hundreds of thousands have faced, hundreds of thousands of times before. People have grieved the loss of alzheimers or loved ones, they've grieved over children lost, grieved over money lost, grieved over churches lost, grieved over failures and mistakes. Pain upon pain upon pain. I'm no different. You're no different.

But the key to enduring our own pain is remembering just that. I've watched someone recently, so focused on their own pain that they have spiraled into self-pity, when self-pity is the last emotion that should be coming to mind right now in their situation. Yet their own pain somehow became greater than the person that was actually suffering. It would be like me putting my sorrow at moms illness at a greater level of importance than my moms struggle with the illness.
It's insane.

But so often we do that. We see ourselves and nothing else. Or what little else we do see is of so much less importance than our pain, our feelings, our struggle.

The idea is one that helped me have a renewed, fresh sense of peace today. This life is temporal, our pain is not rare, or unusual, or anything surprising. It is only for a little while, and then we will enter a land with no more sorrow, tears, or pain. We will enter the promised land. We must only endure here for a little while.

I will praise the Lord. I will praise the Lord. I WILL praise the Lord.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.

So check out the video:




(HT to Robert for the link. Thanks!)