beauty, Church, Faith, Family, Hope, Jesus

It’ll Be Alright

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Problems knock on everyone’s door. If not today, tomorrow. Troubles come. Troubles go. Some work out. Some don’t. Some people crater in the storm, some thrive, others just survive. Eventually the valleys, tunnels, the dark roads all reach an end, and in the end, there’s relief.

Still, it may seem impossible to get through. The mountains look too high. The valleys are too dark and deep. The water is over your head and you’re quickly losing strength. Energy fades. Determination wanes. Encouragement leaves.

You’ve been there. Who hasn’t? It’s hard. It’s like chewing gravel, painful and empty. It feels unfair, impossible, and by human standards, it is. It can’t be done. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t go away. There’s no chance of success. Failure looks inevitable.

It's Gonna Be Alright Story!.JPG

Feel like a child facing a giant? Stop and gather a few stones before the confrontation.

Having a bad week? March around your troubles once a day and on the seventh day see if the walls come tumbling down.

Feeling hopeless? Step out of the boat and walk on the water.

Feel like you have nothing worthwhile to offer? Believe like a little boy with a small lunch of bread and fish and see what happens.

Human plight, for individuals, for mankind, have always ebbed and flowed between good and bad, ups and downs, victories and failures. But there’s something special about low tide when all seems hopeless. There’s extra grit, extra need, extra dependence that comes from bad times.

Is your plight beyond hope? Is it impossible to work out? Maybe. Maybe not.

Tell a nation trapped between the Red Sea and an approaching army about to destroy them that it’s impossible. Tell a man who spent a night trapped with hungry lions it’s beyond hope. Tell three guys thrown into a fiery furnace that there’s just no way. Tell a man who had a conversation with a burning bush, or a man swallowed by a great fish for three days, or a man who spent 100 years building a giant boat when it had never even rained before. Tell them.

Tell it to a starving widow and her child whose oil and flour pots never emptied in a catastrophic drought. Tell people who ate bread off the desert ground for 40 years that it can’t be done. Tell it to a man whose donkey saved his life and then spoke to him. Tell a man who in non-stop hand to hand combat killed a 1,000 men with a donkey’s jawbone. Tell the people who drank water that flowed from a rock.

Bad things happen.  Rain falls on just, and unjust, people. Good people get hurt. Life’s not always easy. It’s not always fair.

It wasn’t designed to be this way, but we’ve all messed it up pretty good and there are consequences to actions. Sometimes the consequences aren’t even because of our decision, behavior or choices.

No one can adequately explain cancer, a young father hit by a drunk driver or why a baby dies, but you can know even in the darkest, most tumultuous days that there is a way through, narrow though it may be.

It's Gonna Be Alright Story

Don’t give up. Don’t quit because it’s impossible. Don’t say it can’t be done! There is a way. There’s always a way.

Just ask the dancing lame man whose friends once lowered him through a roof. Ask the deaf man singing pitch perfect. Ask the energetic woman who used to have a blood disease. Ask the blind man showing everyone a picture he painted of the first sunset he saw.

Nothing is impossible, even though, not everything can be. Look beyond the trees in your forest. See tomorrow even when you’re numb today. Listen for the whisper in the middle of the blaring storm.

There will be a knock on your door today, tomorrow, maybe yesterday. Go ahead. Open it. In the end, it’ll be alright.

29 thoughts on “It’ll Be Alright”

  6. Great one Jeff! I think anyone who reads this is going to be blessed. When times get tough with me, I always look up and tell God, “Remember David slew Goliath with a sling shot.” Kind of a motto for my life.

    Loved it!!! 🙂 God Bless, SR

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  13. Well said Jeff. Seems like you were viewing my last month of my life. I enjoy the hope you have in the pitch blackness. Keep up the encouraging posts. they are the story of life. Is this the abundant life?
    Denny

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    1. I wonder, Denny, if some of the most abundant life isn’t when we are walking in the pitch black, wide eyed, looking for the flicker of Light. It seems like then is when some of the most meaningful, and often most painful, times of life occur!

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  14. Wpw. This says so much that people must understand about themselves and about life. I want to print this and give a copy to both of my grandchildren. I want them to read it and memorize it so that the knowledge in this message will be their stones to kill their Goliaths. Thanks Jeff for sharing and may God bless you and your family.

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  15. It’s like chewing gravel, painful and empty. – what an image! Chewing gravel.

    So, there’s a song I just love called “I’m all right.” – it’s a country song. I always sing along aloud with it, whenever on the radio…And You ca bet I’m singing it right now.

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