She wore a yellowed wedding dress and her entire demeanor seemed to represent her lost past. Surrounded by relics of what had never been, her entire life rotted away slowly. The only thing she ever lived for was plotting revenge on other helpless souls, hoping to avenge her own pain and suffering.
I know, she sounds like a nasty person, doesn't she?
Well, the character I just described is the main villain in the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Her name is Miss Havisham.
She was rejected unexpectedly by her fiance. At the last minute, as she was preparing for the wedding, he ran away and eloped with someone else, leaving her with absolutely nothing. Because of this, Miss Havisham became bitter, turning against any forms of happiness or joy. She locked herself in the depths of her house and kept up all of the things from the wedding, allowing them to all slowly rot away. Miss Havisham even adopted a little girl and trained her to purposefully break little boys' hearts, in some form of sick revenge.
Sounds awful, doesn't it?
However, as I read this story, I saw a bit of reality in it. I've met people who hold onto their pain in a similar way, allowing bitterness to rot them away and paralyze them from living life. It makes me especially sad to see Christians like this since their bitterness goes against an amazing promise given to us by Jesus in the book of John:
"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10 NIV)"
So in other words, Jesus has given us all we need to live life to the full. But, if we're constantly holding onto our pain and grief from the past, we won't be able to truly move forward and live the life he has planned for us.
This isn't as easy as it may appear; after all, the verse tells us that there is a thief who comes to steal and kill and destroy; he will do everything in his power to steal away our joy. He knows how to whisper lies to us, convincing us that we must dwell on our own pain and suffering. But, God has given each of us a gift to help us battle these attacks: courage.
The dictionary defines courage as,"strength in the face of pain or grief."
King David talks about this in Psalm 29:11,
"The Lord gives his people strength. The Lord blesses them with peace."
This whole concept reminds me of another book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis from the Chronicles of Narnia series.
In one scene of this book, the crew of a ship (the Dawn Treader), must sail into a giant patch of darkness, in search of a man who went missing. This scene used to always scare me as a child, especially since the darkness itself had some magic within it that caused the poor crew to see mirages of the things they feared most. But, after sailing through darkness and fear for quite a while, one of the crew members, a young girl named Lucy, makes a breakthrough. The following passage is especially meaningful to me since an allegorical character representing Jesus, a lion called Aslan, makes an appearance.
"Lucy leant her head on the edge of he fighting top and whispered, "Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now." The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little- a very, very little- better...
"Look!" cried Rynelf's voice hoarsely from the bows. There was a tiny speck of light ahead, and while they watched a broad beam of light fell from it upon the ship. It did not alter the surrounding darkness, but the whole ship was lit up as if by searchlight...Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the bow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard...But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, "courage, dear heart," and the voice, she felt surer, was Aslan's, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face."
Chapter 12, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
This passage describes courage in such a profound way. In the midst of darkness and adversity, Lucy called out to Aslan and he answered by whispering, "courage, dear heart."
In the same way, God gives us courage to face our troubles, whether they be big or small.
Over the past two months, I've seen this truth manifested in three of my friends' lives. Adversity hit them in shockingly unexpected ways as both of the families represented by these three friends lost a parent. Seeing their lives get turned upside down in this way made me realize that they have every reason to be bitter and every right to dwell in their grief. However, they have done just the opposite. I've seen each of these friends step up in COURAGE, continuing forward in their faith with strength. In fact, one of my friends told me this in a text only days after his mom passed away:
"God's plans are perfect and wonderful, even if we can't fully understand them at the moment."
Seeing their endurance through these hard weeks made me realize something important; while there is a time to grieve and learn how to live through such events, God didn't intend for us to live in our sufferings. As John 10:10 said, he has given us life to live to the fullest. My pastor actually talked about this a little while ago; he explained that we can either use our hard circumstances to keep us weighed down and lost in adversity or we can let God take the troubles and use them for His glory.
As C.S. Lewis once said,
"hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny."
As I look at my three friends' lives and see how their faiths have grown immensely through their courage, I can already tell that God is planning extraordinary destinies for each of them.
The question is, will you let Him do the same for you?
