The scripture for today, June 28 (6/28), is Luke 6:28f  as found in the New Testament of the Bible:  

“Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”    

There was a book published several years ago entitled,  “Hurt People Hurt People.”  There are some people out there who have been hurt and then turn bitter.  They lash out at everyone.  One method of lashing out is when someone tries to console someone who has lost a loved one in death by saying, “I know how you feel.”  Then the hurt person lashes out at the other person and says, “You DON’T know how I feel!   How dare you pretend that you do!”  

That is a hurt person trying to hurt someone else.  It’s as though they are bragging, “My hurt is so amazingly great, any effort on your part to understand is puny and not worthy of the greatness of my hurt.”  

How do you react to your pain?  Do you run people off?  Or do people admire you for your courage?  When you feel cursed, do you curse back, or do you bless?

 

The scripture for today, June 9 (6/9), is Job 6:9-8 found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

“Oh that I might have my request, that God would grant what I hope for, that God would be willing to crush me, to let loose his hand and cut me off!”

Job was suffering terribly.  The Bible says he had sores all over his body.  There were other symptoms listed elsewhere in Job that indicate he had a form of leprosy.  Now he just wanted to die.

When we get into a life problem that seems hopeless, do we just give up and say, “God, I can’t go on like this.  Just take my life right now.  It’s too hard.  I can’t do it any more.”?

God knows what you are going through.  God knows that Satan is attacking you.  When things are desperately low, your job is just to hang on.  It often takes God time to shift around a lot of other people’s lives in order to alleviate your pain.

Remember, God hurts just as much when you suffer as when he watched his own Son suffer on the cross.  His Son’s suffering accomplished something wonderful for others.  So too, some day your suffering will somehow in some way accomplish something good.  And ultimately, just by surviving, Satan loses and God wins.

This too will pass.  You may not think so, but it will.  You may think you will never smile again, never want to go around people again, never sing again.  But you will.  Just like Job did.