When life is really tough
When things go well, God is there and all is good. When things go hellishly bad, then where is He? What’s his plan in all this?
Watching the film Minari about a Korean family who move to the United States to find a better life, it brought home to me the truth that however painful life’s circumstances, there is a reason for everything. It wasn't that this family had difficulties that were impossible to overcome, but it was the constant drip-drip, day-after-day that made it hard to face. Life was objectively hard for them: poverty, illness, misunderstanding, and just the normal uphill struggles that can really take their toll over time. It's waring. So where is God in all this, especially when life’s difficulties feel genuinely beyond our capacity?
I came across this description of providence that helped shed some light -
"It is worth reminding ourselves, especially if our lives feel particularly fragmented, that Providence passes through the human heart of the Saviour. Providence is not only about seeing how a huge, complicated plan works. It’s not about seeing how all the pieces of my life go together, how I am a part of something incomprehensibly complex and great. Yes, this is a marvellous thing. But, more importantly, providence is how God personally loves me, how he saves me. It is how he uses me to build up his kingdom and save others.
Even when my eyes are blind to the purpose of God’s will, faith assures me that divine designs and intentions are still operative—perhaps not to be understood, but surrendered to.
Newman uncompromisingly assures us:
‘We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random; we are not here, that we may go to bed at night, and get up in the morning, toil for our bread, eat and drink, laugh and joke, sin when we have a mind, and reform when we are tired of sinning, rear a family and die. God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, He lodges it in the body, one by one, for a purpose. He needs, He deigns to need, every one of us. He has an end for each of us; we are all equal in His sight, and we are placed in our different ranks and stations, not to get what we can out of them for ourselves, but to labour in them for Him. As Christ has His work, we too have ours; as He rejoiced to do His work, we must rejoice in ours also’. ref. Fr John Henry Hanson, Home Again
Life's difficulties and uphill efforts can be really hard. It’s like that Greek mythology Sisyphus who was forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down every time it neared the top.
If we are to think of our life as a tapestry. The knots, twists and turns of life are what make the tapestry - it hurts to be squeezed (metaphorically speaking of course!) and pulled, but that's just like the thread going in and out of the canvas to make this beautiful tapestry. We rarely if ever see the other side of this tapestry - the full picture in all its glory. Perhaps at different stages throughout our life, God lets us see the reason for the difficulties, failures or the hurts. But very rarely. Mainly, we have to trust, knowing that all things are for our good. To be patient, to do what we can and when time passes and what was once painful and difficult subsides slightly, we might see something really beautiful: the forging of our personality that is closer to God, a deeper, more meaningful life lived closer to others because you are closer to Him. God doesn’t want us to suffer. It hurts Him too to see us suffer, but He also sees how suffering purifies us, cleanses us of the dross of useless ambition or petty desires so we can see Him more clearly and be with Him more completely.
All those characters in Minari could have given up, thrown in the towel, but instead they endured and sustained each other, thus becoming stronger and wiser as a result. It's a lesson worth reminding ourselves: we are made for love and in the end, love will bring us to greatest of Loves: Heaven.