When life gets you down ... by MaryLu Tyndall

Let’s face it, life is hard. Even if you try and shield yourself from as many problems as possible, those arrows of troubles still pierce you from all around. I used to think life would get easier the older I got or when I reached certain milestones. When I get that job… married that man…when I get that promotion…when I have a child…when the kids leave home! LOL. But in truth, there are a multitude of trials at each stage of life, aren’t there? It doesn’t help that the world seems to be going crazy around us. There’s so much violence, disease and uncertainty. How do you cope with it all? Some people turn to alcohol or drugs, some people exercise, bury themselves in work, and if you’re a reader like me (and why would you be reading this blog if you weren’t!) some people dive into a good book as an escape to another place and time where, even though there are problems, it all works out in the end.

Can you tell I’m a huge fan of a happy ending? I don’t care how well-written a book is or how
well-acted a movie is, if it has a bad ending, I hate it. A couple of movies come to mind that I will never watch again. The Perfect Storm (spoiler: everyone dies!) and Cast Away with Tom Hanks. (He doesn’t get the girl!) Yes, I’m a real sucker for happy endings. But aren’t we all like that? We want our lives to work out perfectly. We want the prince to sweep us off our feet and ride off into the sunset where we live “happily ever after”. (Or maybe you want to sweep the prince off his feet! Whatever)  Yet life can’t make that promise to us, and a good book can only last so long. I used to get sad when I read the last page of a great book. Even if it was a satisfying ending, I wanted more. I wanted to get lost in that world again and again.

In my exhaustive quest for my own happy ending, I finally found a book that I can get lost it over and over and never tire of. I found a book that made me feel like a princess, a book where my prince does indeed come to my rescue and where we actually do ride off into the sunset for our happily ever after. That book is the Bible. And the best thing about the Bible is that it’s not fiction. It’s not a myth or a fairy tale or something conjured up by an imaginative mind. The promise of hope and a happily ever after are true. And though there are many days that are filled with problems and sorrows, I know that because I have given my life to my Prince, Jesus, the Son of God, that someday He is coming to get me and all my trials will end.

 Whether you’ve never read the Bible or you’ve read it multiple times, I encourage you to pick it up daily and read the greatest love story ever told. It will give you hope and peace like you’ve never known as you allow the words to penetrate your soul and you learn to trust in God. He loves you with a boundless love and He will never leave you or forsake you.