Believing that our experiences of pain and death are the opportunities to a more mature and meaningful life, will help us through the difficult times in life.

We often see hurt, pain, suffering and death as our enemies. They are in fact the beginnings of new life. A seed germinating in the darkness and depth of the underground, cannot understand the purpose of its dilemma.  Often only when we have light/insight does some meaning become evident. But meaning, not enemy, is hidden in its depths. If we seek for the meaning of how new life is hidden in a seed in the depths of the ground and its darkness, or even just believe that there is something of magic in it no matter what, then our trust and faith in God’s awesome presence, can carry us through the darkness whether or not we understand it.

Looking over Hartbeespoort Dam some years ago, God showed me it is not He who inflicts pain. That is a lie we’ve attributed to him, and believe. But God only gives life. It is in the depth, the hell and death of something, that something new and more life giving waits to emerge.

Those terrible things that happen in life, like coming through the birth canal from our mother’s womb, out of the safety of her womb into the roaring chaos of the world, are actually the beginnings of something extraordinarily immense, life giving and purposeful. Despite our inability to comprehend such truth, birth more often than not, happens at the expense death.

The history of man’s inhumanity to man, the rape of a child, the injustices of humanity one to another, the deformities we experience in life, are terrible events and deaths. It is at times such as these that we need to remember that God is a God of love and life and new beginnings.

The purification of water as it ripples over the stony riverbeds, makes no sense to the harshness of its journey, but its purity, nonetheless, is a blessing and a gift of God to all who partake of it. Likewise with us, we will be transformed, one degree by one degree in our journey of life often harsher than the riverbed rocks, until in joy we live in the reality that God is the miracle worker of not just us but of the whole of creation.

The beauty that is still emerging will more than surpass the suffering of this time. We live through the pain of birth, not understanding its trauma. But the reality is that it is through this difficult experience that something more wonderful comes to pass. We may not know or ever understand the deaths we suffer and at times it is only knowing that God by nature is a good and loving God, and that he is doing something mysteriously wonderful, that helps us to face another day.