When There Seems No End to the Darkness

I have a young lady in my church who has cancer. It began as ovarian cancer and metastasized to her lungs. She has difficulty breathing and, thus, just coming to church is a chore. The chemotherapy has destroyed her ability to fight off infections and she is extremely tired all the time. She continues to go to work as much as possible but I am not sure how much work she can really do. Maybe she is kept on the payroll because of her employer's compassion.

Many people may point to the sins in her past and explain her struggle as some sort of karma. They may say, "She is getting what she deserves." Really? If we all got what we deserved, we would all burn in hell. None of us are sinless. No, I can't see this as the reason she hurts so much.

So, what do I tell her or anyone else who walks with the Lord and struggles with great difficulties? What do I say to the person who has been without a job for the past two years and is about to be evicted from the home he and his family have owned for the last eight? What do I say to the wife whose husband has left her for younger, more beautiful woman? She is struggling to raise the kids. He has neglected to pay child support and threatens her each time she has brought this up. She feels a victim yet comes to church and believes that he God will rescue her. What do I say?

Well, I don't know all that God is doing but I am sure that He is aware of what is going on in the world. I don't know what He is doing with each of us at the moment but I know that He has created us for eternity. I don't know why anyone goes through a darkness that never seems to end but I know that there is an end to the darkness. I know He is good and completely powerful. I know He will make something beautiful out of what is happening.

No, this isn't what I want to tell them. I would rather tell them that the check is in the mail. Deliverance is nearby. Justice will be served by Thursday. But I don't know any of that.  The young lady may die from her cancer. The man and his family may be evicted from their home.  The wife may never recover financially from her former husband's infidelity.

All of these things will certainly look like tragedies in which God did nothing if we didn't last into eternity. Tragedies are only such because we can't see what God has done for us beyond this life. We can't see why He has allowed many of these things to happen because we don't know how He is preparing us for eternity. We don't realize that our testimonies through these struggles may have been strong enough to cause others to come to know Him. We don't know who is watching nor do we really know the impact that we have had until we get to eternity.

I spoke with a discouraged pastor recently who told me of the struggles he was having in his church. He works endlessly to see people come to know Christ. Many of those he has reached have no money to contribute to his church. The current members are complaining. Their own negativity makes the church reach less people because neither Christians nor non-Christians want to be where bickering exists.

This pastor said to me in despair, "I preached to a much larger congregation when I was younger." I told him that this sounded like a message of faithfulness. Its easy to be faithful when everything is going well but when it consistently goes poorly even when you work harder and harder, its easier to forget it all and go drive a truck. I am sure that something beautiful is coming. You just don't know it will be on this side of eternity.

Faithfulness hangs on because it believes that God makes all things beautiful in its time.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 (ESV)
¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.