HIS GLORY

Why do bad things happen to "good" people...why do so many people die of cancer and other diseases everyday...why are so many people controlled by drugs and alcohol...why is there so much hatred in the world today...why is there so much genocide, famine, and disease on the continent of Africa...why are there so many orphans out there without a family to care for them...

If you are like me, you have probably thought and even said one of the statements above in the past year, month, or even week. There is so much sin in our world today. I have often wondered why God doesn't take all of it away...

This summer Todd and I were shocked to learn of our friends' struggles in their marriage...sin had corrupted their marriage and it was broken. My heart was burdened for my dear friend as she struggled to make sense of it all...as she struggled with her new reality as a wife. I wanted so badly to take all of the hurt and pain away and tell her it was "ok" when it obviously wasn't. I wondered over and over again why this had happened to them...why...

Todd and I had many deep, honest conversations about the state of our own marriage during that time. We realized how over the five years of our marriage we had allowed "the world" to creep in and take over parts of our relationship. We recommitted to praying together and spending time in God's word together on a weekly basis...and it changed us as believers and as husband and wife. When we started to seek God together on a daily basis, we began to see that God had big plans for us and our family...we realized that God was calling us to love deeper and harder than we had ever imagined...we realized that God was leading us down the road of international adoption.

The other day, Todd and I were talking about how quickly our lives have changed in just six shorts months...how what we thought was "important" a year ago, suddenly seems so trivial now...how everything we saved in our bank account was now going towards bringing our "baby Ethiopia" home instead of the nice vacation to a tropical island. We both agreed that God used our friends' broken marriage to convict us of sin in our own lives and made us reexamine our own hearts. God used the sin and pain from their marriage to bring GLORY to HIS name. Their heartache and pain was used to bring us back to daily walking in communion with the Lord. While, we would NOT have wished that this tragedy in our friends' lives would have ever happened, I now wondered where Todd and I would be without that "wake up call" from God. Would we be seeking God on a daily basis...would we be walking by faith down this adoption road...

God uses the good, bad, and ugly in this world to bring honor and praise and glory to HIS name...we might never know why tragic things happen to us or the people around us but we must trust that God is in control and HE will use our hurt and pain to bring others to salvation through Christ.

"Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when HIS GLORY is revealed." - 1 Peter 4:12-13