It Takes Both

“Life is…pits and peaks, blessing and suffering, giving and receiving, working and playing, rejoicing and grieving, overcoming and struggling…it takes both.”
Loren Thornburg

You’ve all been there listening to an argument where you realize there are two sides to the story.  You can’t get the full story without both sides.  There are two sides to every story...including yours. There are both really good parts and really hard parts.  It takes both parts and all sides to accurately view the events before you.  The new year is a great time to look back and reflect on what has happened in your last year.   Yet, we have to remember to see both sides.  There are both good parts and hard parts.  Sometimes our tendency is to only see the hard parts, especially when we are in the midst of them.  Each story requires both rejoicing and grieving.  So wherever you find yourself remember that life is both pits and peaks.  The trick is learning how to enjoy the ride.  

 “Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you.”
1 Peter 5:7 MSG

God is careful with you.  Do you believe that?  I can’t say that I always do.  His careful looks very different than mine.  Yet, even in the midst of all the ways I wished His careful looked different than mine it still remains true: He is careful with me.  It’s hard to see sometimes in the middle of hard spots but then I look back and I see how well He has cared for me so many times.  I see how He used so many hard spots before to care for me so well.  So then I can believe that he is being careful with me even here.  Then, I see it really does take both good and hard, pits and peaks, blessing and suffering for God to be careful with me.  In remembering that and in knowing it’s truth we can live carefree.  It’s in trusting Him to do what He has always done so well that we can enjoy the ride.  Each year is a ride full of both ups and downs.  Oh what joy to live carefree whichever direction it takes you because you know He is taking you and He is most careful with you.