Let's be honest, sometimes life genuinely is the worst.
It's like those pictures someone takes before everyone is ready and we all get a good laugh out of it, but know that it will never see the light of day.
There's no other way to put it. Life can be really bad to all of us no matter what stage of it we're in. And looking at it in the rawest way possible we are bound to have more downs than ups. Even though we really remember our moments of joy the most, we really have way more low moments than we could ever deal with but somehow we do.
Life is not fun, but it's worth it.
For some of us, life is so bad that we don't even want to keep living it. Our moments on the mountain tops don't last long enough or just aren't that memorable and it sucks. We see life as what it is and that's it. We don't see that a lot of the times really great things can come from this gift.
We have to force ourselves to find joy in things that we wouldn't normally find joy in. We have to see beauty in all the small things because if we don't our days will be consistently bad. We will only ever see life as all of our low points and never even recognize a high point.
There is a song by John Mark and Sarah McMillan called "The Goodness." At the beginning of this song, the words are "when the day has run its course YOU are the goodness." You, being God.
Over the past few weeks, I have been experiencing some lows I didn't want to experience. I faced trials and got news I never wanted to. But through all of the trials I would end each day listening to this song, then eventually I started each day with it. I allowed that song to speak truth into my life each morning.
Sometimes we have to see life in a way that many of us never want to see it, but we must hold on to the truth that God is our goodness even in our bad times.
"The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." John 1:5
So let's face it, life genuinely is the worst but we serve a God who is genuinely the best. Even though we go into days knowing our joys may not last all day, we can see the Light even in all of the darkness.