Life, like marriage, is not all honeymoon. Those blissful days at the beach soon give way to trying to figure out how we stretch the money across the month and how we find a position commensurate with our training. For most of our years, life is a struggle. Whether we would choose to have it that way is irrelevant. That’s the way it is. Most of us are facing an ordeal of one kind or another all our days. Some of them have to do with keeping relationships strong; some have to do with fiscal reality; some of them are about the frustrations of the workplace. The longer we live, the more we are assured of life’s being a struggle.

Let me ask you something. What part of Christ’s life do you most appreciate? Is it his birth in the rickety stable at Bethlehem? Is it his growing up in a carpenter’s home in Nazareth? Is it his doing the miracles like the water being changed to wine or 5,000 people being fed? Is it the way he taught the 12 people he called to follow him?

My guess is that the time of Jesus’ life you most gravitate toward is that time when his life was in it’s greatest struggle. Nothing else ever caused Jesus to dig quite as deeply as the agony of the cross. We get a lump in our throats just thinking about it. It was his greatest struggle which became the most memorable time of his life.

So as you struggle remember, God guides and provides and just ahead is a land that has been promised us. When people remember you, chances are that what they’ll remember most fondly is how you faced your toughest challenges.