Life can be be just plain hard y’all. I seem to be in a season of life when so many around me are hurting & struggling. Friends with children and parents battling cancer, friends with serious relationship issues with those they love, friends battling addiction and big work issues, friends fighting for custody of their children and dealing with abusive and dangerous ex spouses, friends with broken and bruised hearts, friends with serious financial issues. No doubt you too can name many folks dealing with heartache and heartbreak and struggle.
I feel like I spend much of my day praying to God to comfort and care for those friends- praying that they would feel His mighty arms around them. And as I pray God draws me over and over again to my favorite verse- Daniel 3:18. Daniel 3 tells the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If you don't know the story, basically King Nebuchadnezzar creates a golden statue that he requires everyone to bow down to. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are respectful to Nebuchadnezzar but refuse to bow before his statue. In verses 17-18 they say..
“If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
Basically they are saying….God CAN save us from this but if he does not, we will still love Him and He is still good. Needless to say King Neb is NOT happy. The three are thrown into a fiery furnace, but they emerge unscathed- without a single hair on their head burnt. Nebuchadnezzar is impressed and he promotes the three to important public positions and emphatically praises their God.
I love this story because sometimes, the answers we get when we pray are hard to swallow and the road we must travel is not an easy one. Sometimes we may feel we are being dropped in a fiery furnace. BUT, regardless of the things of this world we must go through, He IS still good- even when our circumstances are not. Our circumstances are not going to change what Christ has done for us. He is still my hope, because of what He has already done, not what the circumstances are doing to me.
And if not…..He is still the King Most High.
And if not…..He still loves us more than we can ever imagine.
And if not…..He is still good.
