Psalm 119:17-24

Psalm 119:17-24
English Standard Version (ESV)

 I got an email yesterday that hurt.  A notification of a death, of a man who I knew as one of the best, and who I knew as fighting a battle that I didn't know about, struggling, dealing with life, trying to find his way.  Life is hard enough, and we all have days where the sun is shining and the wind is at our backs and we surge forward with the providence of God, and then we have weeks where the stars laugh at our feeble attempts to find our way in what feels like the dead of night.  My friend who died was caught in that space in between, a good man who lost his way, who was fighting something stronger than himself, who didn't know or didn't choose to find the light in the midst of the night.  I don't know much of the story, but it hurts.  It aches with sorrow at what was lost, and I can't for a moment make sense of it.
  You've been there.  I've been there.  We live in a middle place, in between grace and sin.  We know of grace and we see it, we live it, we witness it around us.  We know that God is good, and that God loves us, and we drink deeply from the well of God's mercy and sovereign provision for us.  It sustains us, like manna from the heavens, and we delight in the wonder of God's presence here.
  And then we shift from that into the utter darkness, crying out for God from the depths of our souls, hoping against hope that there might be some deliverance from the oppression that crushes us.  We wonder if the valley walls will collapse and cover us, and our enemies surround us.
  I am complicated.  So are you.  You have good and evil within you, often crying out all at once.  If you're like me, and like everyone else, you tend to hide your struggles within you, afraid that if anyone else knows how hard you have it, they'll turn from you and reject you.  You put on a strong face and tell the world that everything is fine.
  Know two things.  First, God loves you and accepts you as you are, filled with contradictions and imperfections.  God knows your weaknesses and still chose to die on a cross so that you might be redeemed  God knew the mistakes you would make and set out to rescue you anyway.  You are worth the sacrifice, and God would make it again if that's what it took to redeem you.  God doesn't make junk, and you are worth the price God paid for you.
  Second, there is a community of faith that will accept you as you are, because they are like you, even if they struggle to admit it.  Find that community, the one that allows you to be honest and open about your struggles.  We're all broken and being healed by the Spirit.  Love others as God loves you, and fine a community that shows unconditional love to you, and be honest -- in your honesty about your struggles, you invite others to be honest as well, and there we discover how broken we all are, and we fall together into grace, where God heals us.