Life is like a.....

If you are thinking box of chocolates you would be wrong! You may never know exactly what you're going to get, but what do get is covered in one of the worlds best discoveries- chocolate. I don't know about you, but not everything I've pulled out of my "box" of life  has been as sweet as chocolate. Hubby and I were discussing what we felt were some of the more horrific news stories of the week, we were constantly correcting each other on the facts when we realized we were talking about two different events, the bombing of the church in Pakistan killing and the siege at the mall in Kenya. Life is not like a box of chocolates.

I don't subscribe to Forrest Gump's philosophy on life, but I do subscribe to the Phil Vischer podcast and much prefer his interpretation of life which he shared shortly after the school shootings in Connecticut last year: "Life is like a broken amusement park" . I don't recall everything that Phil said in the podcast, (but I promise it's 41 minutes you won't regret!) but that one quote hasn't left me and whenever I hear of horrific or tragic events my first thought is that the amusement park is still broken. God designed the amusement park. It's designed to bring joy, to be something exciting. And if it wasn't broken, that's exactly what our life and our world would be like- full of joy and happiness.  But it is. It is broken. We are having fun on the roller coaster and without reason or warning we are flung to our death. We experience immense joy followed by horrific and unexplainable events.

Phil goes onto expand the thought but in the light of the horrific incidents such as the ones of this week, it brings comfort to me. It doesn't bring any noble purpose to the horrific events, it doesn't help find a non existent silver lining that God had to allow these tragedies to occur for some good to happen somewhere else, but it comforts me because it reminds me that this is not the way God designed life to be. God didn't design the amusement park to fling us to our death, he designed it so we could be in relationship with Him and have great joy. And though the amusement park is broken, I can still try and enjoy the ride until it get's fixed.