Life in the overwhelm takes us from relative comfort to fear to questioning the meaning of life to questioning our existence.
When we endure loss and are tipped into grief, overwhelm threatens every moment. Even when we’re gifted a presence of momentary peace, we know that the overwhelm, the dread, beckons at the door — we wonder when our peace will be vanquished.
FAITH TO OVERCOME
Some people have faith to overcome and it comes naturally to them. For others — especially those who are more realistic than idealistic — faith to overcome comes much less naturally.
Let me explain that ‘faith to overcome’ is nothing about any religious faith — where your faith might be in God, for instance. For me, faith to overcome is much more visceral than religious faith.
Faith to overcome is born of and is underpinned by a hope that insists good is coming.
Faith to overcome is impossible to stifle. It holds the overwhelm amid the promise of something good coming from it.
This faith to overcome somehow helps in the pain of the overwhelm because it hopes for something better on the horizon. Ultimately this faith to overcome cannot be defeated because the hope refuses to be despaired. Sure, there are times when we do despair:
Times that are,
far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.”
— 2 Corinthians 1:8
But even in such places of spirit, there is the intractable presence of hope beyond the overwhelm if only we cling to the fact that good is coming.
If we talk about peace, we can see that once we’ve experienced this travail, the premium for peace is a bounty worth paying the service of our lives for.
This is what life experience teaches us, through the pain of tumult:
Peace is worth the struggle to attain it. Peace is a goodness that indwells hope and joy. Suffering teaches us that peace is the prize of life.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Tribework
Featured Image by lee seonghak from Pixabay
