HAVE YOU CONSIDERED ...
Nobody promised life would be easy
Dr. French O'Shields

Who was it that said, "Life is easy"? No one, as far as I know. Yet there seems to be a common expectation that life is supposed to be easy.

This misconception creates problems when our experience proves otherwise.

During a refreshment break at a church conference, I was talking to an elderly retired minister. He has had a long and distinguished career in my denomination. There were some kindergarten children playing in the room. "Do you remember when you were that age?" he asked me, pointing to the children.

"Not very much," I responded. "Tell me, if you had the choice, would you rather be your age or theirs?"

Without any hesitation he replied, "Oh, I had rather be mine. I don't want to go through that again."

"Life does get kind of hard sometimes, doesn't it?" I said jokingly.

""Not sometimes, all the time," he commented. He wasn't joking. He was dead serious.

This voice of experience is confirmed by the Bible. I have never found the Bible to suggest that life is supposed to be easy. It candidly warns, "Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you" (I Peter 4:12 NIV).

The Bible never tells us that we will not face hardship and difficulty. But it does tell us neither things present nor things to come "can ever separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:39). The Bible never says we will not die physically. But it does explain that those who make Jesus their Shepherd will walk through the valley of the shadow of death unafraid because of His presence with them. The Bible never promises immunity from troubles, just a safe passage through them.

The persons who are surprised when trial befalls them are those who are overcome the most by it. Having expected life to be easy, they conclude they have gotten a raw deal. They become bitter, angry and carry a chip on their shoulder for the rest of their lives. They feel they had a right to something better and they didn't get it.

Pam Moore was a 26-year-old woman living in New York. Her work in the field of industrial design caused her to want to know what it is like to be elderly. So, with the help of a good makeup artist, for three years she posed as an 85-year-old woman. One of the conclusions she drew from this fascinating experience was, "Older people with the greatest peace were those who'd been through life, known its pleasures and sorrows, and were content to savor the present."

What a valuable lesson for a person of every age to learn. Life is a series of alternating experiences of the pleasant and the sorrows, the valleys and the mountaintops. The most tragic are those who are so bitter about the valleys in which they never expected to have to walk, they can't even enjoy standing on the mountaintops between the valleys.

So, my friend, take a deep breath and drink in the beauty of the mountaintop. There will probably be another valley ahead for you; but rejoice, there will be another mountaintop also.

(Dr. French O'Shields is a Gaffney native and a retired Presbyterian minister.)