Receiving Our Challenges
Gunilla Norris in her book "Simple Ways" offers a number of reflections on life. One of her reflections is called, "Receiving Our Challenges." She writes this: "Trusting God with all our life means also to be able to trust the difficulties that come our way. Challenges and bitter sufferings can be gifts as well. To open to them is a profound act of humility. When the door slams and our hopes are dashed, when our health fails, a loved one dies, when the world closes in and the air we breath is full of despair, it is hard to receive such experiences as gift. Years after a dreadful difficulty or loss, many people will say that it was the difficulty that was somehow a profound turning point, a gift in disguise. But in the middle of the suffering we simply want it "not to be." To pray for endurance, reprieve, help of any kind, is only natural then. But when the challenge is the kind that will not go away, we have no choice but to be in it, and with it, and...