AUGUST 10, 2026

 

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.” 
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

PSALM 88-89

50Remember, Lord, how your servant has been mocked,

how I bear in my heart the taunts of all the nations,

51the taunts with which your enemies, Lord, have mocked,

with which they have mocked every step of your anointed one.52Praise be to the Lord forever! Amen and Amen. (89:50-52)

ROMANS 10

3Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

JOURNAL 

I wonder if one of the things that makes life seem so hard is that I rarely experience difficulty as simply today's difficulty. Almost immediately my mind projects it into the future. If something is painful today, I wonder how long it will last. If something isn't working, I start imagining what happens if it never works. If I am uncertain about something, I want to know how the entire story turns out. Before I know it, I am no longer carrying the weight of this moment. I am carrying an entire imaginary lifetime of moments that haven't even happened.

Maybe that is why the present can sometimes feel eternal and impossible. I get so bogged down in outcomes that today's struggle becomes tomorrow's struggle, next year's struggle, and eventually the story of my entire life. I don't just want strength for today. I want assurance that everything is eventually going to work out the way I want it to. I want the magic answer, the shortcut, the guarantee that will remove uncertainty altogether. And when I can't find it, life feels incredibly heavy.

But God has never asked me to live my entire life today. He asks me to trust Him today. Maybe "My grace is sufficient for you" means exactly that. Sufficient for this moment. This disappointment. This uncertainty. This weakness. I don't need grace today for something that might happen five years from now. I need grace for what is actually in front of me, and tomorrow there will be grace for tomorrow.

Perhaps surrender is what brings me back to that reality. I surrender the outcome because the outcome doesn't exist yet. I surrender the imaginary future because I cannot live there anyway. I surrender my demand that life become easier before I can experience peace. Then I return to what is real: God is here, I am here, and this moment is the only moment I have actually been asked to live.

Life is difficult. There will always be struggle, disappointment, uncertainty, and work. But perhaps much of its unbearable weight comes from trying to carry a lifetime when God has only asked me to carry today. I don't have to solve my life. I simply have to surrender it and faithfully live the moment God has given me.

8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” ... For when I am weak, then I am strong. 
- 2 CORINTHIANS 12:7-10