I found this photo on Facebook the other day, and thought I'd hold onto it in case I wanted to blog about the quote later. Later is now.
Remember when I blogged about training and healing? I think life is kind of like training in an adventure game in that we need to face tough challenges in order to become stronger. God often hand-picks our challenges, but the trouble is that the challenges He picks for us are often really tough. Sometimes, our challenges are tough enough that they occasionally defeat us. When that happens, we may wonder why God gave us a challenge that hard and why He didn't help us overcome it. There may be a number of reasons, but the one I want to focus on right now is this: If a challenge isn't tough enough to possibly defeat us, it probably isn't tough enough that defeating it will make us stronger. If it's not actually a challenge, it's not actually going to help us grow.
God knows that life is hard. He made it that way (plus, sometimes we make it harder for ourselves and each other). He knows that we're going to struggle and fail from time to time, and maybe failing occasionally is part of the growth we're meant to experience. If we never fall, we can never pick ourselves back up. God doesn't think any less of us for failing to overcome our challenges. I believe that He only becomes disappointed with us if we stop trying. If we face our challenges and fail to them, at least we faced them, and there's definitely something to be said for that, and maybe even just the display and exercise of courage can strengthen us, whether the valiant effort is met with success or not. As long as we're trying to do God's will, I believe that God has reason to be proud of us, whether we actually accomplish His will or not.
Maybe the test of life isn't of whether we will succeed or fail, but whether we'll continue to try, even when we fail. This is a hard test. But then again, if it wasn't hard, it wouldn't really be a test, would it?
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