Each morning I pause in the same spot and take a minute to appreciate the beauty and enjoy the connection I feel to my Heavenly Father. Some days I am greeted with a beautiful array of sunrise colors, and some days I am blessed with dramatic shades of grey and blue. No matter what scene awaits me, there is beauty to behold. The photo on the left is one I took this morning, and in it I see just as much beauty as the one on the right, which I took yesterday morning. I believe this is because no matter what I see, I know I’m looking at God’s creation, and that makes it all beautiful to me.

I believe life is much the same way…we are going to be faced with days that are beautiful, and days where we have to fight to find the beauty. Days filled with weddings, holiday gatherings, birthday celebrations, coffee with dear friends, date nights, and so on, are easy to appreciate. But the days filled with funerals, lost jobs, family drama, heavy traffic that makes us late for work, etc., take real effort if we want to find the good. I look back on the memorial services of my grandparents in 2017, which took place about 6 months apart. Those were hard days for our family, as the loss of those two people was significant to all of us. But, aside from the heavy hearts of loss on those days, we were blessed with time together as a family. Aunts, uncles, cousins, connected because two people fell in love more than seventy-five years before, and decided to get married and have a family. That family started with four sons, which grew to add 13 grandchildren, and then forty-plus great-grandchildren. Yes, the loss of them was great, but the love and legacy they left behind was magnificent.

As with everything, it’s all about perspective. The enemy is so clever and the very definition of persistent. He knows exactly where the chinks can be found in our armor, and he’ll do anything possible to exploit those weaknesses. He will take the things we are most afraid of, and if he’s allowed the access, he will use those things to beat our spirits to a pulp. The only thing that eliminates the darkness is light…in this case, the light of Christ and the love of God. Where those things reside, Satan cannot. We may not get what we want in life, and we may feel rejected, let down, left behind, wounded, and weak. But we can choose to seek the light, allowing it to illuminate our hearts and minds.

I used to tell my sister that I felt as though life was a rickety, spiral staircase, and our first instinct should be to reach out and grab the rail, which in my mind was symbolic of reaching out for God. Whenever one of us would be having a difficult day, the other would often say, “Grab the rail, sis…grab the rail.” It was a reminder that there was always a way to survive the day and it was always there within reach, waiting for us to take hold. For me, there are days when I want to reach out and grab that rail of stability and hope, but my spirit feels weak and my grasp feels tenuous. In those times, I must remind myself that all I have to do is reach out and my Heavenly Father will not let go. Regardless of my strength, I’ll never fall. In my minds eye, I see a man carrying his worn out, sleeping child up to bed. In his arms, that child is safe and secure. In his arms, the child needn’t worry about finding the strength to carry themselves to bed…they are completely at rest, knowing their father will get them where they need to be.

Life is hard way more than it’s not. That’s just a simple fact of living in a fallen world. Slowly but surely, we are watching the erosion of our society, where cruel and even heinous behavior is allowed. Adults feel free to berate people, including children, in the news, on social media, and in any other way they can find. Having intimate relations outside the confines of marriage is expected, and choosing to wait for the wedding night is considered archaic. The language and intimacy and violence portrayed on television is virtually without limits. And people behave as though someone with a differing opinion is fair game to become a verbal, and sometimes even physical, punching bag.

We are entering an age where being a open believer in Christ risks inviting cruelty and persecution, as well as assumptions of beliefs and attitudes that are often unfounded. But none of this can get in the way of our faith. “But they will do all these [hurtful] things to you for My name’s sake [because you bear My name and are identified with Me], for they do not know the One who sent Me.” John 15:21 AMP

“And [I know that] you [who believe] are enduring patiently and are bearing up for My name’s sake, and that you have not grown weary [of being faithful to the truth].” Revelation 2:3 AMP

When things get hard, and you feel like that rickety staircase is going to collapse beneath your feet before you are able to make the next step…don’t forget to reach out and grab the rail of God’s love, remembering that He will always reach back and will never let you fall.