JOHN 16:33 “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
This is my favorite Bible verse. It has come to mind over and over throughout my life. I first read it at work one early morning. And I printed this verse and put it on my computer monitor and it gave me what I needed to get through each difficult day. It has come back to me as we have faced the death of family members and friends. It has come back to me as I have struggled with faith communities and failed friendships.
It came back to me again at 5:30AM today. My puppy thinks that when she wakes up, I should wake up. I had just informed her that wasn’t happening and dozed off again and this verse came to mind like the voice of God speaking to me. And it made sense in a new way. “In this world you will have trouble.” What an understatement! 2020 is overflowing with trouble. And I’m anxious, afraid, depressed and despairing. I am constantly reminded with each new email, Tweet and Insta post that I’m not doing near enough to respond and fix the causes of all this trouble. I’m not even doing enough to enter into “good trouble” as John Lewis asked us to do. Yet this morning, while it was just barely getting light out and my puppy gave up and went back to her bed, I heard the voice of God say “But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
“In this world you will have trouble.” God doesn’t prevent trouble from coming. God doesn’t put a bubble around his believers so that nothing bad will ever happen to them. But God knows that “in this world you will have trouble”. It’s unavoidable. It really is what it is. And, don’t miss this, God also knows what the trouble is and will be. Because God knows us fully including our history, our sin, our successes and failures both individually, socially and globally. And yet what it is isn’t all it is because God has “overcome the world.” God doesn’t say we don’t have work to do or that if we believe then all our trouble will just go away. God says that we can have hope, we can have guidance, we can do the hard work that needs doing to get through the trouble to the other side because God has already overcome the trouble.
It’s that simple and yet that difficult. We still have a lot of work to do. I know I do. And it’s hard and overwhelming and stressful. And that’s where the rest of the verse comes in, “but take heart!” There is hope! Believe in the God who has “overcome the world” and follow God’s lead because only God knows the way out. And, if we can do that, we will be able to experience God’s fundamental truth that “in me you may have peace.”
Julie Bromley
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