God's Grace is Sufficient!

Last night at dinner, my husband told me that the wife of one of his co-workers has finally lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. We've been praying for her, and it seemed a year ago that God had answered prayer by giving her a miracle! (She was a Christian, fully committed to God's care and keeping.) When her cancer was first diagnosed, the doctors gave her only six months to live, but they didn't know what God could do. Her brothers and sisters in the Lord immediately began praying for a miracle, and God gave her a year and a half to live! While Larry was off work last Friday for a play day with our grandkids, God said to her, "Enough! It's time for you to come home." Now, God's grace will be sufficient for her husband and two teenagers left behind.

This morning I learned from a friend of mine that an important person in her life committed suicide on Sunday night. This "way out" of a very hard life for one person has just made an already very difficult situation much worse in the lives of others. There are many who have been negatively affected by someone who wrongly said, "Enough!" How my heart aches for my friend--for the pain this has caused in her life and the lives of those around her!

I've been there too, more than once in my life. Life is hard! Sometimes it just doesn't seem worth the effort required! Yet, life continues, day after day, year after year, until someone says, "Enough!" Who has the right to say that? Only God. God is the giver of life, and He alone is the One who should be allowed to say, "Enough!"

Can He be trusted to see us through the hard times? He is truly able (always) -- it is we, human beings, who are unable sometimes. Why is it so hard to fully turn it over to God and let Him take us through the hard times? Does God actually understand the pain and the difficulties we endure? He says that He does. He even says that suffering is actually good for us! But, nonetheless, it can be so hard, that we want to give up and say, "Enough!" Then what?

I have found help and strength to continue on when I have no strength left. In those times, my help and strength comes only from the Lord--from total dependence on Him. It requires admitting my own helplessness and crying out to Him for His help. It may also require admitting to someone else that I'm at the end of my rope, and accepting someone's loving help.

How sad to be so far gone, that you call it quits, without first committing yourself into someone else's care to keep you going when you can no longer keep yourself going. Believe me, I fully understand this feeling, but I also know the importance of letting someone else do for you what you cannot do for yourself -- because I also know the pain that is left behind for others to deal with when someone says, "Enough!"
(My life has also felt that impact several times.)

There is hope! There is new strength to be found! There are new lessons to be learned! There is light at the end of the tunnel! There is new joy to be experienced! Because there is God, and God's mercies are new every morning -- His grace is sufficient for every need (yours and mine)!