My life theme right now is resilience. If my life is the Lord's painting and He is the artist, resilience is the colour He has been mixing through circumstances and challenges to help bring out the Jesus-image in me.
A few weeks ago, we found out that one of the adoption agencies we are working with in Ethiopia is closing down, which means we are transferring to another agency and having to push back our adoption date. (This is not unusual when working in developing nations, but it is trying none the less!)
What is needed to face constantly shifting, long-standing pressure? Resilience.
As we were flying back from Winter Ramp conference yesterday (where I spoke over the New Year), I was reading an article in TIME magazine about the human mind (the original article is here). As I was reading, the Holy Spirit kept highlighting resilience.
In the article, certain phrases leaped at me. Here's one:
. . . [T]here are benefits to forcing people out of their comfort zone. Resilience is essentially a set of skills, as opposed to a disposition or personality type, that make it possible for people to not only get through hard times but to thrive during and after them. Just as rubber rebounds after being squeezed or squished, so do resilient people.
I asked myself this morning, “What Bible passage speaks to me about resilience?" This one came to my mind right away. Read the entire passage for the full impact; here are some excerpts:
God has been kind enough to trust us with this work. This is why we never give up. (2 Cor 4:1 CEV)
We often suffer, but we are never crushed. Even when we don't know what to do, we never give up. In times of trouble, God is with us, and when we are knocked down, we get up again. (2 Cor 4:8, 9 CEV)