Trials

Life is a battle. Nothing new there, we all know that to be true – some people seem to be more cushioned than others, but nobody is exempt from trials and difficulties.

Since the fall of Adam and Eve, every one of us has been battling against the elements and against the temptations of our own evil desires, which the enemy at times seems to willfully and skillfully put in our path. It's not hard to trip us up, is it? Someone knows all our weak points - better than we do, possibly. And then there are the terrible events and day to day problems that happen to us over the course of our lives over which we have no control. Bereavement, rejection, abuse, natural disasters of many sorts (I'm talking globally here) and of course the final enemy, death, which not one of us can cheat. How many of us have not known the crushing ache of the soul because someone we love has died, rejected us, or left us for someone else? How many of us have not been in a dark tunnel of some sort, desperately seeking light at the other end, holding on to nothing but the hope that we need to keep living?

 

If it was not for the incredible love of God, none of us would, or could, survive. If He decided to withhold the rain or the sun from us, or send a plague, or stopped lifting us up when we fall, we would have no hope. If our Father in heaven had not sent his only Son, Jesus, to take on himself our sins and take the punishment that should have been ours, we would be dead even though we are alive. There would be no hope for us.

But because of God's love and his justice, demonstrated at the cross, and because of his power shown at the resurrection, and because light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never put it out, we can now live in peace – not just peace with God, but we can know the peace of God. We even have His Spirit in our lives as a guarantee of our inheritance! Death to life. Despair to hope. We can now receive comfort, guidance, joy and forgiveness, and start to understand the true meaning of love. But even then, there is still a battle to be faced, daily.

 

So what does all this have to do with Dernier Publishing, you might be asking yourself? :-) Fair question! Well, it was a daily kind of trial that made me think of writing this blog – concerning the simple (hehe) task of sending some boxes of books to IVP, who are running the Keswick Bible Convention bookshop. Peanuts really, in the whole scheme of things, but nonetheless a trial. I have previously used Royal Mail to send boxes of books, but with the recent increase in cost, I looked into alternatives. To cut a long story short, we now have an account with City Link, but too late to send the books for Keswick. So I drove the books to Nottingham myself, which meant a long drive there and back, battling sudden downpours of rain, spray and poor visibility, an 'incident' on the A52 going into Nottingham (standstill), a confusing google map, the slip road to the M1 being closed coming home, a flooded road in Derby (diversion) and one exhausted me by the time I got back to Kent.

Compared to having your house flooded, seeing your family hacked to pieces by Boko Haram extremists, facing famine and losing your children one after another to preventable diseases, this doesn't reach high up the scale. But it's nonetheless a battle. Another headache we have been facing is our new PO Box – don't let me start on that one! (Apologies to anyone who has sent us mail recently.)

So to cut to the chase, we have to keep looking up daily, keep praying, keep on keeping on, because if we did stop, it really would be a disaster . . because we have a job to do; we need to get our books out to the children who might not otherwise know that they can look up. May the Lord be gracious to us and keep fighting our battles with us and for us. As King Asa prayed when faced with an army way too big for him to deal with, 'There is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty.' Amen to that.