Stay strong, be courageous and do it all with integrity.
This is written from a man’s perspective only because I am a male of the species, but if you are female, just change it to a woman’s perspective.
Think of the time when your wife kissed you at the door on the way to work, and she greeted you when you got home. Your kids ran excitedly to wrap their arms around you when you walked through the door. The dog’s tail wagged in excitement, and you rubbed her head lovingly. There was electricity the whole night without the dreaded loadshedding. You find an amazing documentary/sports programme/movie you have been wanting to watch for ages on Netflix, and your wife says, “Go ahead, love, watch, you deserve some time off.” It just gets better; your favourite meal gets served, and you have a nice cold beverage of your choice in hand. You watch your program without interruption, and you go to bed with the knowledge that your stomach is full, your bank account is full, your wife loves you, your kids love you, your dog loves you, and your colleagues at work love you. Life is simply great.
Remember that day? Nope, me neither. I admit, some days have been close, but everything is aligning just right… not so much.
Here is a more realistic scenario: You are late for work because there was no electricity, and your alarm did not go off. Now you had to have a cold shower. You rush out the door, shouting a goodbye to your wife as she is running around trying to figure out what she is going to do with her hair because the hair dryer runs on electricity. You are late coming home from work because your boss needed an urgent something or other done at the very last minute. You get home, and your wife is running late as well. You open the door and the dog, excited to see you, piddles on your shoe and all over the floor. You wipe it up and think how hungry you are and then…. the dreaded loadshedding strikes again. You knew you should have installed that solar ages ago, but your bank account does not allow it. You call for your kids. One is in her bedroom with her headphones on, the other is making a TikTok. They don’t respond. Your wife gets home and is just so mad about something Lucy said at work, and you listen to her complaint, trying with all your might not to let your mind wander. Eventually you go to bed and lay there thinking of the fight you had with your colleague that morning, how you are going to afford that solar, how you are going to get that dog house trained, how you going to get your kids to acknowledge your existence and how you are going to solve your wife’s issues at work, all just running on a loop in your head until your alarm goes off and you start all over again.
We all have bad days. Some days are worse than others, and sometimes someone else’s days are worse than yours. Let me give you a few real-life stories of people having a bad day. I have not fabricated these stories; they are well-documented.
I read of a young girl who had lost both her parents at an incredibly young age and was raised by her older cousin. Now she grew up to be an attractive young girl, and if losing both your parents wasn’t enough, she was abducted, trafficked and paraded like a commodity to be sold and eventually forced to marry her kidnapper, where he would use her body as he pleased.
We also hear of a young boy who was violently assaulted and became a statistic of human trafficking, incredibly, by his own family. He was forced into slavery, where one day he was falsely accused of sexual assault receiving a substantial prison sentence.
And the final story is of a man in a country without freedom of speech or expression who was assaulted and arrested just for his political and religious beliefs. He was charged with a capital offence and imprisoned by his opposition and thrown into a pit to starve to death.
I think we can consider these as bad days.
Why on earth would I be telling you these horrendous stories? Well, although these people’s lives were almost unbearable, we can learn a lot about how they coped. What these people had in common was how they reacted to these challenges. Not one of them ever gave up, even in the worst of circumstances. How did they do it?
They had integrity.
In the second story, we see Joseph as a man with integrity. Genesis 39:8-9 says:
“But he refused. “With me in charge,” he told her, “My master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”
Integrity is refusing to sin against God. Now we could easily be tempted to lose our temper when the lights go out, or when we find our lives in chaos. It is natural to desire a life of total calm where everything goes right. How we handle the situation shows the true integrity of our character. Did you beat the dog when she messed on your shoes? Did you fight with your wife when she was late coming home? Did you stray from your marriage because you were not getting enough attention? Did you lose your temper with your children and force them deeper into avoiding you?
They had strength.
“This is what the Lord says: ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord” (Jer 17:5 NIV).
Jeremiah, in our third story, showed absolute strength in the face of adversity, but he did not get his strength from himself or anywhere else, but from God. We cannot be strong of our own volition. We are strong because we trust in the strength of the Lord. Do you pray to the Lord to be your strength through your tough times, or do you toss and turn all night thinking how you are going to find the strength to cope? You do not climb out of the pit by your own strength.
They had courage.
Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is to boldly declare in the face of fear that you have triumphed over that fear, just as Esther did in our first story:
“Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16 NIV).
With strong conviction and knowing what is morally right, Esther was not afraid to die.
Now I understand my first scenarios do not come close to the lives of our hero’s, but our challenges in life are not to be belittled. They slowly but surely gather like small grains of salt, just one grain at a time, until eventually your life becomes untenable, bitter and covered in salt. Watch out for the little annoyances in life; they can become your demons. Find the courage through the Lord to fight your demons:
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom 8:31 NIV).
If our protagonists had handled their situations slightly differently, they would not have achieved the successes God was preparing them for. We have heard it said that adversity builds character, but I would rather say that adversity builds Godliness.
Esther ultimately rose to halt a genocide and save a whole nation, Joseph persevered to become one of the most powerful men in the land, and Jeremiah became one of the greatest prophets in antiquity, who gave a nation, and eventually the world, hope of a future with a coming King who would save the people and bring righteousness to the world. None of this happened immediately, but it happened.
You can ask yourself, through all your adversity, be it small or be it absolutely life-altering, how can I serve God to realise His plan for me on the other side of this? And while following God’s plan for you, stay strong, be courageous and do it all with integrity. God’s plan might not happen now, but it will happen.
