“Willingly Facing Unpleasant Realities”

Sunday, September 10, 2017

This week unavoidably places several unpleasant realities on our minds. Floodwaters are still keeping thousands of people out of their homes in Texas, a violent hurricane has battered our Caribbean neighbors and is now a major threat to Florida, and tomorrow is the sixteenth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever in this country.

When the apostle Paul wrote one of his letters to our Corinthian brethren, he listed the major ordeals he’d faced in his lifetime, and then added, “apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.” (2 Cor. 11:28)  Even if his own state of affairs had been good, the weight of what others were facing would have continued to put serious pressure on Paul’s mind. And while we might suppose that he could just ignore those concerns, he was not able to do that. Why? Simply because the well-being of those people mattered to him.

Such should be the case with us this week. It is a struggle to bear the weight of so much concern spread so many directions. It is perhaps an even greater struggle to carry so many concerns to our prayer closet and feel that we have fittingly addressed them all before God. Surely, there is a temptation toward deliberate ignorance—“If I don’t think about it, it’s like it’s not even happening.” But that mentality comes from selfishness—not true concern for the well-being of others. The godly see the better path is to face the facts instead of run from them. And when they do face life’s unpleasant realities, the godly are able to deal with them in light of the assurances of God—the only source of true, lasting comfort.

- Dan Lankford, minister

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