The never ending trials daunt your senses, the emotional agony rips your soul. “Escape, escape!” your soul cries out. The echo rings down the corridor of black torment, enveloping all it encounters. You take a deep breath between pangs of grief, the cold sweat breaks down your back. You feel terrified and alone, much like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene. Your soul is exceedingly sorrowful and you want the cup to pass from you; yet you know you must continue, as escape from this trial is only achieved by breaking through it.
Thank God that most of us will never go through trials which demand and try our senses to the utmost, much like the description above. However, all of us will have to face trials and situations which demand us to make a choice: do we abandon our faith and try and go it alone, or do we cling to our faith and trust in our sovereign Lord to pull us through? For those who have faced dire circumstances—and I’m not talking a bad hair day here—it is self-evident that the most difficult thing in life is to hold on to one’s faith in the face of trials. The human nature is wired to be a crowd follower: where the wind blows, that’s where the soul goes. However, it is in having escaped the grips of a trial by tenaciously holding on to one’s convictions that releases the kingdom of God within us, and once done, the great mystery of God is no longer out of our reach.
Getting ensnared in the vortex of trial has to be one of the most taxing experiences that one can go through. During such a test, we cannot see the outcome as we are blinded by the whirling mass of problems that hem us in on all sides. We have entered the “no man’s maelstrom” which sucks us deeper into its center, permitting few to escape its wrath. The fortunate few who do become liberated from such a dilemma are the ones who release the situation over to God and trust that through His providence, all storms will eventually quiet.
Easier said than done. Yet we must hold on in such a turbulent situation. We must not lose heart when all security is gone, all sense of peace is obliterated, all sparks of hope are being doused with buckets of water. And though we want to turn the clock back to the pretrial period, we know we cannot. And though we steal a brief second during the trial to fantasize about a former time, a time when we could breathe easy, a time when life seemed to be what God had promised, a time when our senses were not so overwhelmed so as to forbid us to hear, to feel, to taste, to smell; the moment evanesces and the trial continues to pound us. We are overlooking the precipice. We are on the brink of death. All goes dark...
And then, just as God promised, on the third day, while the sun was breaking through the clouds high above, the rock rolled aside. The tomb was opened and the Christ God was risen. The pain and agony is over and the new life is begun. The escape has been negotiated and the victory is won.
