Finding warmth and love in darkness | Devotional
Many of us have had the mindset that doing good things will reward you with good. Majority of us treat life like a boomerang, where when we do good, our good comes back to help us. The mindset that thinking and speaking positively and that nothing is impossible as long as we believe has been ingrained in our minds since we were young. But what if we’re faced with something we can’t manage our way out of? In a TED talk by professor and writer, Kate Bowler, we explore this age-old mindset.
But no matter how much we try not to believe in this mindset, it is extremely difficult to avoid falling into the trap of believing that virtue and success go hand in hand. Sometimes when bad things happen to us that we can’t fathom, we can’t help but question reality. “Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Wasn’t I a good person?” These are some of the questions we ask ourselves. The mindset of thinking that hardships and difficulties are just detours in our long journey of life has been serving many of us well. This mindset that spurred us to achieve, to dream big and to abandon fear can’t always help us in our sticky situations, especially those that are out of our control. Sometimes, the good that we do is unable to help us and it’s hard to accept that we’re all just a breath away from something that can change our lives completely.
It’s this fear of the unknown that many of us are afraid of that also urges us to believe that the things we go through all happen for a reason. It’s a coping mechanism that many of us develop to justify and evaluate whether our hard work will pay off. We all want to live in a world where not one bit of our suffering will be for nothing, a world where nothing is lost.
But we should not fear this unknown just because we don’t know what lies beyond the step out into the darkness. Sometimes, what may lie beyond may just be the one thing that will help you continue your journey! When Kate had a brush with death while going through her terminal illness, she described her experience as not one of anger, but one of love and warmth. It was this unexpected indescribable warmth that she felt during her close encounter with death that surprised her and helped her to get through her fear and anxiety.
You see, the world is filled with events that are wonderful and terrible, gorgeous and tragic. But these aspects of life don’t cancel each other! These are the things about life that makes it just so wonderful. Life is beautiful and life is so hard. But as we learn to live life without counting the cost and without reasons and assurances that nothing will be lost, we let go of the fear that causes us to hesitate and hold us back. Life will break your heart and may take everything you have and hope for, but in the darkness, there will still be beauty and there will always be love. And because of that, every now and then, it’ll feel like it’s more than enough.
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