Richard Wurmbrand tells the story of a Christian from the former Soviet Union who when released from prison wrote in a letter how he began to see his own frustrating circumstances in a different light. "My outward appearance is not attractive. In the slave labor camp, I worked beneath the earth. I had an accident that made me a hunchback. Once a boy stared at me and then asked, 'Uncle, what do you have on your back?' I was sure that some mockery would follow, but I still answered, 'A hunchback.'"

"'No,' said the child. 'God is love and gives no one deformities. You do not have a hunchback but a box below your shoulders. In this box angel wings are hidden. One day the box will open and you will fly to heaven with these wings.' I began to cry for joy. Even now, I write and cry."

Joni Erickson Tada, a very gifted woman confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic because of a diving accident in her youth, was asked by an interviewer how she felt about her handicap. While articulately responding to the interviewer, Joni was creating a beautiful floral watercolor painting, skillfully drawing with the brush held between her teeth. "Watch what I am about to paint", she said. She then proceeded to sketch a frame around her painting. "This frame represents a handicap. Some view it as a limitation. Actually it is a design tool that causes you to focus on the area of creativity."

So it is with all of our weaknesses, deformities or hardships. We can view them as severe frustrations or tools that the Designer can use to focus us on areas of creativity. Some suffer bereavement, poor health, a difficult marriage, financial failure, imprisonment, or physical disfigurement. Through Spirit-enlightened understanding we can see that these sorrows are actually boxes that hide angel wings which are meant to propel us on our journey to heaven.

The eighth chapter of Romans challenges the thinking of those who are 'In Christ Ones' (Christians). "If God be for us who can be against us?.... Nothing can separate us from the love of God.... And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

Instead of feeling sorry for what you don't have, focus on what God has given you - all the resources that are found in Christ. What are the areas of obvious creativity on which you are to focus? Don't waste your sorrows. Accept them as Designer tools. They can fly you towards your destination of Christ-likeness.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus