Life

Life is hard. It is incredibly difficult. Pain fills much of life. It is impossible to live a blessed amount of time without feeling cursed. Eventually life will feel like death. Life will crush you. It will kick your ass when you're awake and when you are asleep. Suffering will think it is your best friend and nobody will be able to convince you that it is anything but your most intimate and wild lover. Yes, life will seem pointless and beyond unfortunate repeatedly. The redundancy of pain will color life the darkest shade of black you could ever imagine. The heart of the deepest cave at midnight will plot murder in its heart out of jealousy for the darkness of life in those times.

Everything in life will end up failing you. People will especially fail you. Over and over. You will pick dirt from your teeth countless times through a well lived life. Doubt about the goodness of life will flood your soul. For if you truly live you will encounter heartbreak, death, injustice, war, divorce, rape, miscarriages, abductions, famine, poverty, sickness, oppression, hate, and every bad thing that evil and this world has to offer to mankind. Trouble will find you and it will change your name to Ash. This is undeniably true and anyone who attempts to convince you otherwise has either never encountered life or is wrapped in that living coffin of darkness which pain brings and seeks only to feed his or her vampire-like craving for company by dragging you into the bear trap of their misfortune, for misery desires nothing more than such a miserable company.

But at no point should we ever be convinced that life is not worth living. Life has always been, is, and forever shall be a precious gift from God and even though it may seem like curses, torture, and even death we must remember that these sufferings are temporary and not meant to last forever. They are not part of the life God has promised us. For this reason he has defeated sin and evil through Christ on the cross. There will come a time when these terrors shall no longer exist. But until that time, know that there is a deliverance. For we can endure all things through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:13) and we will never be completely defeated (2Corinthians 4:8-9).

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

-Paul of Tarsus, 2Corinthians 4:16-18