Blessings and battles of the Christian life

Does the Christian life include blessings? You bet! Grace, love, hope, peace, joy – it’s hard to count.

But let’s be honest: the Christian life also includes suffering, doesn’t it? We are sinners saved by grace (Ephesians 2:8-10). We carry the treasure of the Gospel in jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Recognising these two realities is essential. At the start of our spiritual walk, we are so captivated by God’s goodness that we feel like tasting heaven on earth. But when we discover that we continue to suffer, it’s hard to focus on anything other than our problems.

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But a significant step in our growth is understanding that the Christian life is made up of both blessings and battles. They are always present, like railway tracks leading you to your destination.

Think about the hardships in your life. They are there. Let’s not downplay them. They hurt.

But they are not the whole story! They coexist alongside so many blessings. They are part of a larger story of redemption and resurrection. And they may become springboards to some of your most precious moments with God, revealing themselves to be unexpected blessings.

As we remember at Easter, the cross of Christ isn’t the end of the story. After tragedy comes redemption, and after the apparent end comes a new beginning.

In the words of Francis Spufford, “Yeshua's story has its happy ending because of its tragic one: happiness after tragedy, on top of it, through it, achievable only by going to the very end of the tragic road.”

Jesus could have ascended to the Father without dying and rising again. But he led the nascent Christian movement through a collective experience of death to show that there is life on the other side.

This pattern helps us find meaning in our tragedies and transform our greatest battles into beautiful blessings.

The hardships in your life may help you say, like Jesus, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ Your struggles may contribute to your sanctification and help you meet people who have wronged you to say, ‘Peace be with you.’

We are saved by grace because the cross cost Jesus everything. His wounds heal us precisely because they were real wounds. And they invite us to die and rise in Christ.

As Paul put it in the Letter to the Romans, ‘We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life’ (Romans 6:4).

Happy Easter!

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