"Let the good times roll"
This has been a song played over and over on a radio station playing in my office at work. And doubtless it is the theme of countless other songs. People, including myself, want nothing from life but happiness, euphoria, and freedom from any sort of trouble.
But "trouble" is inevitable. And what happens when life strips us of the ability to quench our troubled heart with more exuberant music and light-hearted banter? What happens when we are forced to discover that all of this ecstasy is nothing more than a sham?
Life is real. Entertainment is distracting. When people live for entertainment, they merely waste their life chasing a distraction, a lion that preys on the naivety of shallow souls.
Perhaps the purpose of trials is to do nothing more than to deepen the strength and maturity of our souls. Maybe it's not to learn a specific lesson, but to recover our childish dreaming from the sea of vanity. Maybe its purpose is to do nothing more than to free us from the suffocation of idle entertainment. To awaken our souls to real life...to the fact that life is more than eating, drinking, and merriment. To take life seriously. To grow up and claim responsibility while at the same time accepting inadequacy - that we are all "that guy who can't do anything right himself or protect those in his charge." This is all the Lord's doing, and it is precious. It just doesn't seem like it at the moment.