Clarity and Joy

Clarity that comes from hindsight is a wonderful thing. Probably one of the better things in life. In my packing and sorting and labeling and all that, I ran across a journal I kept from that third year of college. I always wished I would have kept better track of these sorts of things but I never do so you could imagine my astonishment when I found it.

Without going into detail here and to make a LONG story short, I will recap it with this sentence: It was probably the most difficult year of my life. ...And it wasn't even a year. Reading through it I realized it was only three and a half or four months (so that's how difficult it was, it seemed like a year!).

I come to a very steadfast conclusion and I've said it before: Conflict defines relationship. Without conflict we do not know what the true value is of someone or something that we have. Whether it be conflict with another person or someone else seeing you through conflict, truth about that relationship comes to fruition.

I am also amazed and very surprised (pleasantly) to see that some relationships I held back then are not only present in my life today but they are some of my most cherished and favored things in life now, nine years later.

I cannot believe God's amazing grace in this simple fact of my life. I think it really puts in perspective all God, through Jesus, over came just to live with us on earth. I mean, my conflict was great in my life. Hands-down it will probably be the greatest conflict of my life (I hope) and yet, in the grand scheme of this world from creation to the time Jesus comes again, it was pretty insignificant. Yet out of that great conflict in my life, such joy has come because we all fought for some semblance to be brought to reality. I cannot image the greatest conflict of all time — that between God and us because of sin — being resolved and the joy that it will bring at the end of time. Praise be to God! A thousand times over!