I think the Christian life is a process of being weaned off of fantasy. At least it is for me.

In my fantasy, I have no financial difficulties, my cars never break down (neither do household appliances), I’m always fulfilled in my job, I regularly accomplish my goals, my loved ones are healthy, I’m in the best shape of my life (regardless of my age) and bad things don’t happen to good people.

Your fantasy is similar, I suspect.

I wish life really was like that, but as we all know…it’s not. Not since our parents, Adam and Eve, got kicked out of the garden.

Hebrews 11 details the lives of faith lived by Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses and others. They believed God and God did awesome things. Hebrews 11 also gives the account of some others who didn’t have it quite so good:

Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

I don’t think I like that part. Tortured? Jeers? Flogging? Prison? Sawed in two?

There’s no way I want to be sawed in two. I don’t even want to be jeered.

And yet, for some, that’s the result of a life of believing God.

So where is God in all this? What about His promises to protect us and provide for us? To never fail us or forsake us?

Here’s how Hebrews 11 ends:

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

Our hope is not just in this life. God has prepared something better for us. Someday, the pain, the confusion, the disappointments–they’ll be over. Until then, we have God’s presence through whatever we’re facing.

He is with us now and He will be with us forever…and His love, His grace, His strength, His comfort and His peace will sustain us through this life.