“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

Psalm 147:3, ESV

“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”

Psalm 56:8

The hard is scary.

The hard can be deeply painful.

It’s confusing when we read about the God who raised Lazarus after four days in the grave—four days in his burial clothes, without breath, in a tomb—and yet we walk through the painful, even excruciating situations in our life.

Sometimes we follow God into the jungles of the mission field and are wounded because of the work… even carry lifelong scars because of our faithfulness.

Sometimes we watch the people we love fade and find their healing only at heaven’s gates.

Sometimes our hurt ends with the thing we love closing and the people we love scattering.

I detest the hard.

I fear it.

The God who raised Lazarus is the all-powerful God.

Why doesn’t He hold up His hand when the wave of hard crashes over?

The hard can be deeply confusing.

But Scripture never promises hard won’t come.

“In the world you will have tribulation.” (John 16:33)

Tribulation.

Trouble.

Hard.

“But take heart, I have overcome the world.”

The promise isn’t that the hard won’t come…

God binds up our wounds. He doesn’t take away the scars… but makes a place for healing to happen.

He bottles our tears… sits with us as they fall, bottles them, and remembers them.

God didn’t dry up the sea but gave a means to pass through.

He didn’t hand David the crown, but guided him in the caverns, giving him wisdom for his next steps.

He didn’t douse the flames of the furnace, but stood beside His children within it.

He doesn’t ignore our hard.

He doesn’t promise to remove every hardship, but He is the God who sits with us, holds us in our ache, cares for our wounds, cares for our tears.

Hard is going to come.

It’s nearly a guarantee of life.

But take heart-

The God who knows your thoughts from afar has overcome the world.

And walks with us in the hard.