Sometimes . . .

Sometimes I think there must be a place where things go right and life is not so hard.
Sometimes I think there must be a time when everything isn’t falling apart.
Sometimes I think that if only I was smarter, more talented, stronger, more determined, then I wouldn’t always be struggling.

I’d like to know where that place is.
I’d like to know when that time will be.
I’d like to know how I can be whatever I should be so that things would go easier.

I’ve been learning that no matter how it looks, everyone has pain.
Everyone has struggles.
Everyone is just trying to do what has to be done to get by.
It just doesn’t seem that it should be that way.

Maybe I’ve just grown up watching too many movies that ended “Happily Ever After”.
Maybe I’ve seen too many tv shows where the problems are all solved by the end of the hour.
Maybe I have an unrealistic view of how life “should” be.

I wonder if people who lived in the old west felt that they were meant for more than what they were doing.
I wonder if people in medieval England thought that life wasn’t meant to be so hard.
I wonder if ancient Egyptians longed for a time when problems didn’t exist.

I think the pioneers must have looked at the vast night sky and wondered about their place in the universe.
I think the serfs must have watched the royalty and wished for that kind of life.
I think the slaves must have daydreamed of being an owner rather than the owned.

How strange that we all want purpose and value.
How strange that we also want everything to be easy.
How strange that no matter where we are in life, we want things to be different.

It makes me think that we must all be born designed to live in God-created Eden, but are thrust instead into a world designed by men. This place, with it’s sin, hierarchies, jobs, rules, and expectations is so different from what we were meant to live in that something within all of us knows that it just shouldn’t be this way. We just don’t know what to do to make it right. There’s no way to fix it, so we just do whatever we can to dull the pain of it. We try to block out the wrongness of it.

I think that’s why, as Christians, we long so much for Heaven. We know that finally things will be right when we get there. When being here becomes more than we feel that we can bear, we hold on to the hope that one day we won’t have to be here anymore. We can someday be where we were meant to be. We can be in the place with no more tears. We can be reunited with those we love who are no longer with us. We can be with the One who gave His life for us. We can be where we belong, because we certainly don’t belong here.