After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace [who imparts His blessing and favor], who called you to His own eternal glory in Christ, will Himself complete, confirm, strengthen, and establish you [making you what you ought to be]. 1 Peter 5:10 AMP https://bible.com/bible/1588/1pe.5.10.AMP

You’ve heard it said what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger ? Maybe maybe not ?

What if it wears you down to a thin edge of your former self and you become a transparent sliver of who you were ?

Or what if it hardens your heart so that you become cast iron Inside and your bitterness oozes out in outbursts or anger or vengeance and the venom expels everyone around you and your left alone in a hard casket of your former self?

You’ve all met people like that and gave them a short shrift before their toxicity spills out on to you or the person you once knew is a shadow of their former self having had their very essence squashed out of them.

Either way it’s unproductive to be beaten through the suffering or hardened and embittered through it!

There’s always another way……in these verses above I take heart and encouragement that what the apostle Paul was teaching was that once we’ve suffered, when we’ve been through the trial, how we’ve been through it will be more of the true test of our character then wether we got through it or not.

Then the fruit of the trial is to be strong, firm, established, stable in what ? In our character, in our courage, in that whatever else comes our way, we have the inner resolve the inner mettle to deal with it and come out sweeter, fresher more compassionate.

If we choose to not become bitter, empty, resentful and harsh we can truly be a light shining in the darkness and with all dark trials we often need someone to guide us along the path of darkness that is dimly lit where pot holes and bandits reside to steal our hope and trip us in to the plough of despond like young Christian in Pilgrims Progress on his way to the Celestial city.

‘Take heart’ Jesus said, ‘I have overcome the world’….meaning He is above it and has been in it and He can take us through it…if we put our trust in Him and if we are there to lend a hand to guide others through their dark path of suffering into the beautiful light of a new day in the Celestial city or through the wardrobe into Narnia’s land!

Take heart my dear suffering friend and we shall walk through the wilderness into the dawn of a new day and say ‘All is well with my soul’

I’m made whole again!

From one pearl to another

Mags Lewis 14/11/2020 7am