When Worst Brings Out Best

“The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it...”

— Nicholas Sparks

I am a person who has lived two lives. The second life endures today and I am so thankful for it, for I feel I truly know what the meaning of life, or at least my life, is about. In the life that I had to leave behind, due to no choice on my part, I really had no idea about this second life. This second life, as it began, promised both hell and heaven. It involved great suffering, but also great revelation.

For the first time in my life I learned to properly rely on God.

Enough about me; what is this strange phenomenon where the worst brings out our best?

This is a secret the world doesn’t enough know about. There is a great blessing at the end of the worst cursing when we choose to do that journey with God; relying on God; allowing God to transform our total lives. This is the hard part for most people: total surrender.

Pain is the gateway. Suffering opens the way to the knowledge of God. Hardship opens our eyes to the plight of the world. Persecution holds the blowtorch of the blasphemy and mockery Christ dealt with right before our faces. And as we enter our struggle—our journey into the new life—the old life is swallowed up to be a memory.

When worst brings out our best we can liken it to a biblically-stated phenomenon. This is why the Bible is good news to the poor, the suffering, the condemned, and all those who have been, or feel they have been, rejected by life.

God turns our world upside down—in the best possible way.

Where Do We Go When There Is Nothing Left

Not everyone experiences the rock bottom place, but the potential for a rock bottom place exists at every point along the expanse of each of our lives.

We never know when life will break us; when our emotions will be tipped to the point of helplessness; where we imagine hope is trapped in an abyss.

But in the lowness, in that dark pit, where we experience the worst of our emotions upon the worst of the situation, we cry out to God, sobbing incessantly, and God shows us himself in our plight.

God enters. His Spirit breaks in on the situation, giving us direction and, therefore, hope. We have some difficult decisions to make, but none without the Presence of God to guide, encourage and goad us.

Having been broken, where there was nothing left of ourselves with which to scaffold pride, we went to The Source because we had nothing left. Coming to the end of ourselves is about coming to the beginning of life.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.