LIFE'S UPS AND DOWNS Author Unknown

I lift my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come? (Psalm 121:1)

Sooner or later, everyone finds himself in a place where all hope is gone. Illness, often, or unemployment that stretches on and on through month after discouragement month. Divorce, maybe, or the terrifying waywardness of a beloved child. You've tried everything you or anyone else can think of, many times, but you've finally reached the end of your rope.

God is at the end of that rope, as God has been at every point along it. When you've done all you can, all that remains is to turn it over to God. Does this mean that you'll get your heart's desire? No -- if that were so, the millions of people whose families prayed with everything that was in them for a healing and didn't get one would still be alive. You don't know in advance what your help will be, or from which direction it will come. But in unexpected deliverances and in anguished defeat, that which comforts and stays with us is God. Perhaps God will join your rejoicing. Perhaps God will share your sorrow. In your life, you will surely know both of these ways of feeling God's presence.

I think the question we can best explore with God is not so much "What will happen?" as it is "What can happen in this situation?" God is not an appropriate subject for fortune-telling; God is a God of prophecy, of discerning meaning and the potential for good in everything that happens, the good and the bad. Viewing life's ups and downs in this way opens my eyes to possibilities I would never see if I located God only in the those moments in which I got my way.