Snapshot of Serenity

Processing Life’s Hard Moments Through the Lens of Scripture

By: Pam Farrel

My mother is a shutterbug. She has shelves and shelves of photo albums. Her love for capturing the moments of life and love, friends, family, and fun has passed down to me. Photography captures priceless memories. In this world of social media, cultivating your image, and sharing only the outside joys (and avoiding the inner pains) leaves little room for learning to process the trials, traumas, and tempestuous storms. We live in a broken world. So many days seem difficult, discouraging, and downright depressing.

Life is often a mix of tragedy and triumph. It is easy to click, post, and share images of victory, happiness, elation, or adventure. However, when we take the time to learn to process the pain, through the peace only Christ can give, with hope and help from His Word applied to our stress and sorrow, we can find inner tranquility and share ironclad strength and a proven path to serenity with others. Our spouse, our children, and extended family also gain a better, stronger, more resilient, and calmer version of us!

In our own life, the past few years of our social media captured weddings, births of grandchildren, birthday parties, family vacations, travel to exciting places, and a new home on our live-aboard boat slipped in a marina on the Pacific Ocean. Sprinkled among these are raw moments of fears, frustrations, and stressors like the almost two-year process of downsizing, giving away nearly 90 percent of our worldly goods and belongings, then riding a roller coaster of emotions trying to sell our home for over a year, so we could move to take care of two 90-year-old parents.

During these years, God foreknew my life stress and knew I would need to cultivate joy in a new city with the new role of serving elderly parents. Through Scripture I was studying, God handed me snapshots of Christ and as I pondered Him, I gained more personal peace, serenity, and tranquility that transformed dark days into ones empowered and enlightened by God.

Take your pains and pressures, and process them through the following snapshots of Scripture. Bolster your faith by reviewing the goodness of God when sufferings shatter your peace.