Another Olympics has just been and gone. I’ve always found it ironic that every 4 years, the world’s top athletes gather to compete in this the most rarefied of elite competitions and in doing so, get the rest of the world to drop their physical activity as they sit watching hours on end.
More profoundly, they didn’t get there by not trying. Quite the opposite. So much so that they have a whole team behind them dedicated to getting them there, especially their coach. With a single minded focus on their success, coaches push their athletes to their limits and beyond. You don’t win competitions resting on your limits. Success lies beyond the edges of it and the coach is instrumental to driving them there.
So it is with God.
Life is tough. How often have we heard people complain to and about God for that? But that would be like the athlete complaining to their coach about the ”tough training” session. And to be fair, there are times we ourselves are the direct cause of the problems we face.
Job 1:12 (extract)
Either way, like the good coach He is, God helps us out of our troubles. Not only that, He helps us through them, using them to forge our character which aside from our history, is the only thing we take with us from this life to the one beyond.
Pain and failure. Sometimes they more than signals of something wrong, they may be on the way to something right.
