Resilience

The ice storm that took the power grid down is long melted away. Electricity flows again. Storm debris cleared and our human lives go on.

The Reverend Stephen Crotts is pastor of Village Presbyterian Church in Charlotte Court House, VA. He is also the director of the Carolina Study Center, Inc., a campus ministry, located in Chapel Hill, NC. Pastor Crotts may be reached at carolinastudycenter@msn.com.

But I notice by the roadside a tree still bent over from its one-time, heavy burden of ice. It has yet to find resilience.

I meet people like that. Men and women still bent with a weight long since lifted. The death of a child, getting laid off at work, rejection by a boyfriend or girlfriend, failing out of school, bankruptcy. Bad as all these things may be, they are survivable. That is, if one has the character trait of resilience.

In the Old Testament book of the prophet Jeremiah we meet Baruch. He was a secretary who saw in Jeremiah a rising star. It fell to him to write down Jeremiah’s prophetic words. And he thought surely as Jeremiah rose to prominence, he would himself be elevated.

Yet Jeremiah’s book was burned. His boss was jailed and Jerusalem fell to invaders.

Baruch was inconsolable. To him Jeremiah said, “You’ve sought great things for yourself. Do not do so. The Lord gives you your life. Get over your spoiled plans. Move on! Find the life in the remainder of your days!” (Jeremiah 45).

Bouncing back. Moving on. Resilience. It is a must in a world that includes disappointment, failure, and defeat.

I constantly remind hurting people, “God is still at work. You are not seeing this in its final form. Get up and move on. Trust Jesus.”

Coach Vince Lombardi of Green Bay Packer fame used to tell his team, “Our glory lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

No tree snaps back overnight. But with warming days, sap rising, and rain, it can stand up straight again. And so can people.

The apostle Paul was victimized by rejection, false accusation, ill health, jail, beatings, and more when he wrote, “This one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, I press on for the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  (Philippians 3:13-14)

Resilience grows out of trust in Jesus Christ. It is the confidence that it isn’t over until it’s over, that God can still meet us where we are and still bring a blessing out of our life.

N.T. Wright put it so well. “We today are a mere shadow what we shall become.”

So, take heart. Feel your feelings. Cry it out. But move on, trusting God. Life’s not over.