Sometimes we say things without giving them much thought. I remember doing that a few years ago while my wife and I were on our mission to Samoa when I wrote a note to my family saying that Cheryl and I were fine after our cyclone experience and then I ended it with “Life is good.” As soon as I hit the “send” button I immediately but temporarily regretted saying that because for many, and for all of us at one time or another, life seems anything but “good.” It seems to be hard, frustrating, painful, hopeless, unfair, stacked against us, uncertain, unjust, bleak, boring, tedious, frightening, certainly challenging.
But it has a purpose. In a flash of insight I once heard a wise woman say, “Life is not a playground; it is a laboratory and a workshop.” She was right. In a laboratory we learn something, and in a workshop we produce something.
Life is also a test track, a proving ground, perhaps even a crucible. But I say, live with it and be glad for it. If we do it right, we can come out a winner, justified, and refined—and as happy as if it were a playground. The time will come when each of us will say, “I can see clearly now—the rain is gone….”
Yes, life is good.
Trivia to ponder: At a steady jogger’s pace of 6 mph it would take 173 days to go around the equatorial circumference of the earth, and more than 5 years to go around the circumference of the largest planet, Jupiter. And after all that, we only arrive at where we started. But I'm sure we would be changed.
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