Facing Adversity.

I remember this walk. We had just finished our ministry in the mountain village and started our trek to the countryside where our bus was waiting for us. We actually didn't take the way we went up back down, but we took another (more circuitous) route down. As we traversed, it soon felt like we were in the rain forest, covered by all sorts of trees, bushes, plants and the like. I couldn't even count the number of times our Ugandan guides would tell us not to touch this or that plant because it was poisonous, etc.

As you can see from the picture, it wasn't exactly the prettiest of days, weather wise. In fact, it looks rather ominous with that black cloud hanging over the distance, an area we were headed straight towards. Sooner than later, as we were going through a rainforest-like part of the mountain, surrounded by canopy, it started pouring rain like no other. It was in fact, a matter of moments before the entire team was soaked from head to toe. Our clothes, bags, everything. Our dirt trail down the mountain, under all this canopy, became muddy, and coupled with the fact that we were all wearing cheap $15 starbury shoes, ankle sprains were just waiting to happen. Personally for myself, as I carried the stereo down the mountain, it made things especially difficult, and at one point, I almost slid off the side of a cliff.

So the conditions at this point were anything but a walk-in-the-park. People were getting tired, weary, soaked, cold and just groggy. In short, it was a sort of Moroto bus ride Part 2. After the hour or so of enduring this, we finally arrived at the bottom where the sun greeted us. Our arrival was, at best, bittersweet for most of us. Strangely enough, as I think about all the uncomfortable conditions, the process of actually hiking down, and finally getting to the bottom, I realize it really represents our lives.

In looking at where I am in life right now, I am where I was in the picture at the top. I am about to walk into the unknown, the cloudy, the ominous future. In the immediate future, I am walking into a week that will be stress filled with errands, meetings, midterms, essays, just stuff that will take up every day this week. In the long term future, I have to think about LSATs, law school, family, job, etc. The latter has, as of today, special significance for me. At work, a friend of mine, a senior, came in, someone whom I met in the early stages of my freshman days when I first started visiting KCM. He told me about senior year, how his had been filled with non-stop studying, out of state med school interviews and how senior year was really all about finding your future, your job and identity. He intimated to me that senior year is nothing like the other years in college, for the most part. Along with this, I remembered the experiences one of my professors shared in class regarding his grad school life. Immediately, I became distressed at the thought of how unprepared I am for this future. I find myself a little lacking in breath in the challenges, the scrutiny, the intensity of law school, with fellow students all competing and professors scrutinizing my every move. Then I realized this doesn't even take into account HOW I'm to get into law school in the first place, which is yet another challenge. After this year, my 3rd year, it's the beginning of the rest of my life. The last 20 years have been a blur, and all this is ahead of me, and I'm stuck not knowing what to do.

Fast forward to now, and as my future is still looming over me, I'm reengaged in my effort to get through this week. But writing in this blog and looking at the picture at the top reminded me precisely of God's sovereignty. Specifically, 2 Corinthians 1:3-6:

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the suffering of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer."

Every day, we are walking into that ominous place we can't quite make out. Sure, we know we'll be at school, home, library, etc, but spiritually, Satan is there every second, trying to stumble us and the scary thing is, we don't even know when or where we sin. It happens and so often we're so unaware, much of it due to our own sinful nature.

In concluding my reflections, are we to look internally and be consumed by how these uncertainties and adversities challenge us? Or rather, are we to look externally and upwards to God, constantly wondering how to depend on him to challenge these adversities? I choose the latter. It's so hard, I know, when things are stressful, grim and uncertain, you don't know how things are going to pan out, or even if you do, you don't like your chances. As hard as it may be, our faith has to be more than flashing lights and sound, because without fruit, our faith is rendered as nothing more than empty rhetoric. We have to have faith in God alone that, HE alone will give us that strength and perseverance to glorify HIS name by making it through adversities. If we don't, it's guaranteed that satan will stumble us and grab a hold of us. Satan works in all sorts of ways, even as innocently as times when we forget to pray or do our QTs.

We have to remember that when we are stressed or uncertain what was said in 2 Corinthians above. Just as God gives us comfort for our advantage, so he throws our way adversity for our advantage in not only building perseverance and dependence on God's grace, but developing that "patient endurance" so we can lift up our friends, family and classmates. Things may look bleak from time to time, but God is supreme, end of story. Don't ever think that God is our of His league when you need help because He isn't. We are, that's why we need Him. Appeal to all the things He's done in the past and know that those miracles continue to this day, and much more are guaranteed. And don't worry about your shortcomings and sin, because those have been washed clean with Christ's blood. In closing, one of the things I was told in Uganda that I will never forget is this:

God doesn't ask for success;
He asks for faithfulness.

Amen.