As a pregnant woman about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pain, so were we in your presence, LORD. – Isaiah 26:17

Today’s Scripture Reading (November 29, 2013): Isaiah 26

Oscar Wilde once wrote that “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” There is amazing truth in Wilde’s words. Often when we go through the storms of life, we feel like we are the only ones there. Sometimes we even seem to want to be the only one in the storm, because then at least we have someone to point to or someone to blame for the situation that we are in - and somehow that makes us feel better. I know that one of the frustrating things that people have to endure when they come to me for counselling is how often I tell them that there is nothing special about their situation. But part of what I am trying to get them to understand is that we cannot allow the situations of life to dictate what we do in life – because every one of us has situations. It is part of what I think Wilde meant when he said that we are all in the gutter – we all have situations that we have to deal with, we all have storms that we have to walk through, and the truth is that our situations are not really all that different from the situations of those around us. Whenever we study the lives of people who have done amazing things in this life we find that they had to overcome obstacles – and those obstacles are often eerily similar to the ones that we face.

We are all in the gutter, and most of us spend our time looking at the gutter and feeling sorry ourselves, but some of us are looking at the stars. And of the gutter people who make a difference, they are usually the ones who find a way to take their eyes from the gutter and lift them up so that they can see the stars. They begin to see things that they can do to reach toward the stars – even from their place in the gutter.

It is really the message that Isaiah had for his readers. He wanted them to know that he understood that they were in the gutter and that they were feeling extreme pain, but Isaiah also needed them to understand that the pain they were suffering from was like the birth pains of a pregnant woman. Yes there is pain in the moment, but the hope of the future and the hope of the life that is about to be brought into this world is such that the hope is greater than the pain. If that was not true, women would have stopped having babies a long time ago. The hope defeated the pain, even though the pain was immense. In the words of Wilde, the stars that we see from the gutter give us so much hope that it makes being the problems that we are experiencing in the gutter seem worthwhile. Would it be better if life did not have pain? |In some ways I want to say “Of course it would,” but that is not the reality of our life. But even though our life is filled with pain, it should also be filled with hope.

Every single one of our lives is beset by storms. And storms always bring pain. That is simply the way life is in the gutter. But God is also present in every storm. And that should infuse our lives with hope. Because God’s strength is greater than my storm – or any gutter.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 27