Rights and Choices

I haven't been sleeping much lately due to pain, so I'm tired during the day. I forget things and my thinking is slowed. I wish it weren't so, but it is. I want things to be the way I want them to be. I want health and happiness. Is that wrong? I mean everybody wants that, don't they?
The truth is, we have come to believe that these things are our rights. Somehow, this is our due. Whether it is or it isn't is not really the issue. The fact of the matter is that the world does not run this way. Bad things happen all the time, and happiness is hard to find. Just open your eyes and see the injustice all around you. It's not just in your own life, but in every life. This is the condition of our fallen world. People have diseases; there is pain; there are unhappy endings; there is loss of every kind.............. It's rotten, but true. So I have to tell myself, to deal with the way things are. We can bang our heads against the wall, refusing to accept the inequity of it all, or lean on God to help us deal with things, strengthening us and getting us through to that place of hope that we long for, which WILL one day come for His children. 1 Peter 5:8-10 says. "Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And after you have suffered for a little, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you."
We don't have a choice when it comes to suffering. We all suffer - Christian or non-Christian, good or bad, black or white, rich or poor, foolish or wise........ That's just the way it is. But we CAN choose how we go through it - with the help of God.......or without it.
Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that God causes all things to work together, for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purposes." He doesn't promise to remove the bad (though sometimes He does do that). He promises to get us THROUGH and to bring good out of the bad!
Take heart, Christian! Embrace the council God gave to Joshua - "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." (Joshua 1:9) WherEVER you go....... into loss of abilities, pain of the body, despair, or bondage to a body that cannot function....... wherever your pain takes you, remember this: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? (Romans 8:35) And, "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)