Resilience

I'm writing this from central Africa where I have been visiting the four families who work with MAF. It's been a difficult time, confirming that life in Africa is very unpredictable, and to survive in ministry you need a degree of resilience. I arrived as one family left at short notice because a close family member is critically ill. Last week another family were forcibly evicted from their home because the owner wanted to give the house to someone else. Yesterday, the wife was stopped by the police as she drove to the school to pick up her 3 children. When she complained she was roughed up and 'arrested'. It was several hours before she was released, and the issue is still not resolved. This morning I heard how the third family had been burgled a few months ago, possibly by people they had been trying to help. I will spend the afternoon with a family where the wife is homeschooling five children and struggling with diabetes.

Resilience is the ability to bounce back after a setback, the courage to get up again when you've had a fall. The apostle Paul said 'We are knocked down, but not knocked out' (2Corinthians 4 :7-12). Where do we find such resilience?

Partly it has to do with our personality, but much of it comes from how we understand and interpret what is happening to us. As Christians we interpret the events of life through the grid of the sovereignty of God, and the belief that somehow, he is able to work all things together for our good. See Romans 8:28. This doesn't mean we don't feel the pain of difficult events, but that we can find meaning in them, even if it is more with hindsight than at the moment.

One reason we spend time regularly soaking up God's word is so that we have this 'God perspective' within us when life throws up the unexpected. We may well be shaken, but we don't have to be swamped because we are convinced that we are in the grip of grace.