Read: Ecclesiastes 7:1-9:18
I was babysitting a friend’s children when one of them fell off his bike. He fell into a mud puddle and scratched his knee. I had two other kiddos with me so I wasn’t able to carry him home like I wanted to. Instead, he had to walk. It broke my heart hearing him cry the whole way, saying over and over, “I can’t do this!” But while he was saying he couldn’t, he was. When we were about 30 feet from home, I turned to him and said, “I know it’s hard and you feel like you can’t do this but look behind you at how far you have come and look in front of you at how close home is!”
The little guy truly believed he was having the worst day of his life. Everything hurt and no matter how close he was to home, his perspective was blurred by his current predicament. Have you ever felt like a day was the worst of your life? Have you found yourself going through the motions, but saying over and over “I can’t do this?"
Ecclesiastes 7:14 says, “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.” We often can’t see the logic or lesson in our bad days. But when God allows us to experience pain, it’s for a purpose. With each step we take He walks alongside us, reminding us how far we’ve come and how close we are to home.