Life Is Hard...Sometimes It Stinks

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

This is not a pretty picture (actually, the picture is better than the smell).

On Thursday, March 27, our team spent the day visiting two Compassion International projects. We made home visits at both of these projects. Compassion does a wonderful job of helping children live in poverty. People around the world support these children who are then connected to a project in their community.

It is in these projects that they feel safe, eat nutritious food and hear the good news of God's love for them in Jesus. These projects are places of hope for impoverished children.

However, these projects are much different than the homes in which they live.

On this day we visited homes next to this creek. This creek smelled of sewage. There was no escaping the stench. This is the condition in which these children live, and around which they play. 

"Jesus said to [Martha], 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?'" John 11:25 English Standard Version

Life stunk for Martha. Her brother was dead. Jesus entered the stench of Martha's life and gave her hope by speaking these words and raising her brother from the dead.  

We are given that same hope in the stench of our lives. It is the power of Jesus' resurrection that meets us where life is most putrid and gives us hope. What Martha saw with her eyes, we see with the eyes of faith.  

Yes, sometimes life stinks, but its when life stinks the most that we hold on to Jesus.

Today's Challenge: Most of us have a place in our lives where things are not going well. Today picture Jesus standing in the middle of this situation and crying out the words of the above Scripture.  

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(Click on picture to enlarge.)

Text and Photographs ©Copyright 2012-2014 Douglas P. Brauner.  ARR.