Together

In the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony Stark lays out the impossible odds to Steve Rogers and asks, "How were you guys planning on beating that." Steve Rogers replies simply, "Together." "You'll lose," says Tony. "Then we'll do that together too," says Steve. When we take upon ourselves Christ's yoke and walk with Him, we aren't guaranteed that every challenge we face will end in an unmitigated success. It was never part of the plan that we could avoid loss and pain entirely, even if we managed to be perfectly obedient. After all, Jesus Christ was perfectly obedient and He suffered more than all of God's children put together. Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, not the tree of knowledge of good and more good. Even if we pray and fast and exercise faith and obey God's commandments and have His Spirit to be with us, we are still going to lose sometimes. So, we might ask, what's the point of developing a relationship with an All Powerful Deity if obeying and trusting and relying on Him still means we occasionally get taken down at the knees by tragedy and sorrow? Why should we bother being faithful if our righteousness doesn't guarantee smooth sailing over life's troubled waters? Christ doesn't say, Come unto me, and I'll make sure you're never tried or tested again. He says, if you are facing an impossible situation, come unto me, let me in, and we'll face it together. And if we lose? We'll do that together too. If we have to descend into the gall of bitterness whether or not we rely upon the Lord, then isn't it better to face the disaster with Someone who has gone through that exact, particular horror, and is willing to go through it with us again, so that He may wipe away our tears and lift up our hands that hang down and strengthen our feeble knees and show us the way out of the pit? If we have to lose anyway, then isn't it better to lose together with the Lord, than to lose all by ourselves? Our faithfulness doesn't guarantee a 100% success rate, but it does mean that win or lose, we will not be alone either in our failures or our triumphs, but will have our Savior beside us to share in our glory and in our pain.