My Lifegroup has only met twice and it is already becoming something amazing! We have had some pretty cool discussions, but something stood out to me on Monday. We have been watching the Nooma videos by Rob Bell, and we recently saw one entitled Luggage. It deals with forgiveness, which is one of the hardest and most difficult thing for some people to deal with and talk about, but it turned into more of a conversation about storms in our lives.

After the video, we were talking about some of the things that have happened in our lives that we have had trouble dealing with and forgiving. Some people may ask, “Why is God putting me through this? Is He punishing me? What did I do wrong?” But a guy in the group said he didn’t look at it that way. He said, “I don’t think God is punishing me in any way, I think I had to go through some things because it is the only way He could get it into my hard head.”

So true. We have to go through certain things in our life so that we can truly see what perhaps God has been trying to get us to see for a while. Or for us to see truly understand and appreciate something to come in the future. But this trial or rough stretch is the only way He could get through to us or show us.

This is definitely not easy to grasp when you are smack in the middle of one of the hardest times of life, but just knowing that God is there with you every step is something in itself. He is there.

There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his own son, all the way until you reached this place.     Deuteronomy 1:31

Without the rain there would be no rainbow, right?