Going on a Lion Hunt

Have you ever gone on a Lion Hunt? It usually happens in a group of children, at church or school. An adult leader sits you down, and leads you through a story. It commences with you getting out of bed and getting ready, proceeding down a path, through a gate, and into the bigger world. You traverse rivers, forests, sandpits, marshes, prairie grass, and any number of other obstacles before finally ending in a cave with a lion. On the trip out, every obstacle you encounter is greeted with the refrain "Can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go around it, guess we'll have to go through it." At the end of your journey, you light a match, take one look at the ferocious beast, and run for you life, proceeding at top speed through those land elements you previous conquered, to end up back where you started, safe in bed.

Sometimes I feel like we're on a Lion Hunt. We get through one hard thing, only to be confronted with another. The challenges and hurts never seem to end. We survive the holidays (barely), only to be faced with kindly meant but cruel comments and unintentionally hurtful actions. When you are already struggling to survive even a small blow can knock you down. In the distance, we can see more obstacles looming. Every time, all we can say is: "Can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go around it, guess we'll have to go through it."

I understand that we have to keep on slogging through the trials life hands us, big and small, those brought on by this grief process and those merely exacerbated by it. But it feels like we have been running from the beast for a long time now, and I just want to be back home in bed.

I recently came across a page of quotes entitled "Hope for Troubled Times."

This Dallas Willard quote really struck me, and I'm trying to take it to heart:

"There are none in the humanly "down" position so low that they cannot be lifted up by entering God's order, and none in the humanly "up" position so high that they can disregard God's point of view on their lives...The barren, the widow, the orphan, the eunuch, the alien, all models of human hopelessness, are fruitful and secure in God's care."