If we eat the wrong plants, we get sick and die within minutes. The water may be contaminated. Or when we bend down to drink the water, if we're not careful, an alligator or crocodile creeps up on us and bites us in half.
That jungle is full of dangers.
Our world is sometimes full of crises. Sometimes we may see family and friends fall, as though they are in a battlefield. Illness, money, heartbreak, and more decimate them. It hits us too.
Occasionally, there comes a time when we feel like the sole survivor standing in a battlefield of wounded and dying. We perform triage.
“Why God?” we ask. “Why are those we love hurting? I can't fix their problems.”
“I didn't sign up for this path. I thought my life would be peaceful and changed once You came into it.”
C.S. Lewis described this, writing, “It is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded ridge…and another to tread the road that leads to it.”
Maybe we have to traverse the jungle, taking a path that looks neither to the right nor to the left, so we can reach a better place. We get to the better place because we struggled during the journey of the jungle.
Perhaps we aren't supposed to fix big problems. Most of us don't negotiate arms reduction treaties. We can't find the cure to the cold, let alone cancer. No matter how much we reduce, reuse, and recycle, we can't keep the earth green, the skies blue, and the water clear. Although I wish I could, I probably can't cure your illness, find you a job, save your marriage, or salvage your relationship with your children.
The only Person God ever asked to save the world and all of us was His only begotten Son. The rest of us lack the talent, brains, and divine nature to do it.
We may be tempted to creep into a hidden hole and quit, saying, “It's not my problem. There's nothing I can do.”
Jesus told us what we can do during dark nights of the soul:
We can be salt.
We can be light.
We can choose not to hide our light under a bushel, but to reflect His light.
We can light a single candle which shines within our souls.
If God made our light to shine as a simple candle in the cold of the night, then that's all we need to be. We don't have to give up because we aren't able to give light from a double asymmetric gas floodlight system fit for a ballpark.
There are times a special moment is better shared between two friends with a single candle than from the biggest sports lighting system in the world.
Take heart when life hands us sorrow after disappointment followed by frustration. C.S. Lewis described a world full of unwinnable situations in the final chronicle of Narnia, The Last Battle. When I read it aloud to my children, I burst into tears at least once every ten pages. These are characters we grew to love and cheer as they struggled. As they fight battles bound for certain defeat, we think all is lost. It seems the end of everyone we loved.
The same can happen to real friends and family in this world.
Lewis explains at the end of The Last Battle:
And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
If you or your friends are stuck in a jungle, remember to say a prayer, light your candle, and do what you can. We may not be able to part the Amazon River and do what appear to be great miracles.
When we focus on what we can do the small things the light of Christ works in us and through us. It may be as simple as washing our neighbor's feet. I know a woman who ministered to others by cleaning their bathrooms she said God can do great things through the person willing to clean your toilet.
In whatever way He calls you, shine your light. Then, watch Him bring light to the dark, hope to the depressed, and peace to the frightened.
Mary Biever is a homeschooling mother of two who publishes encouragement articles and runs Encouragement Workshops For Today's Families.
This article was adapted from one of her columns.