Our mess of yesterday can become our mess-age today. Our test of yesterday can be our test-imony today". We can complain about the lemons in our life, or we could get a glass and have some of God’s lemonade. 

Life is a struggle. Life is hard, full of setbacks, and acquaints everyone on earth with pain. Take a walk through a nursing home, a prison pod, a neonatal intensive care unit, an intensive care unit or in a hospital setting, a homeless shelter, or a mental health wing. You can rise above your pain and setbacks because they are temporary. They are part of life that is sliding by and will soon pass away. 

Are we struggling through a difficult time right now? Our trials are not without a reason. God has promised a time to come where there will be no more pain. All of our baggage, sorrow and burdens will be gone. We can hold onto this knowledge while we work to increase our patience and endurance. While this may do little to ease our heart right now, it does give us joy to look forward to a time of peace. It's a beautiful thing to recognize His hand weaving events and people together in time.

When we are hurt emotionally, the fastest way to stop the emotional bleeding is placing the band aid of bitterness on. It keeps us from feeling the pain and on guard of being hurt again. It also keeps us from feeling God at work in our lives or His call to do His work.

We have two choices for our lives. Either we can live by faith or by sight. We can trust in God's abiding presence and power or we can depend upon our own resources. But wealth, like health, status, and reputation are all subject to decay and disappearance. Only one Source is always there for us and we know we can depend upon him, because he has been there for so many who have come before us. Never is forever and this one never I cherish: "Never will I forsake you!"

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end. (NLT) ( Ecclesiastes 3:11 ) 

But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God's righteousness. (NLT) ( 2 Peter 3:13 )