Do you ever glance around the world searching for a reason to feel hopeful? Do you ever end up discouraged? Such a quest can feel like a flickering flame, threatening to extinguish in the slightest breeze.

While driving through my hometown today, I passed by a row of small wooden crosses stationed along the side of the road, each adorned with toddler-sized dresses. My stomach churned, considering the horror represented by the roadside tribute to 215 children whose remains were found in an unmarked burial site. The unmarked graves discovered in multiple residential school grounds across Canada represent a generation of young people abducted from their homes who faced unknown horrors. If I'm honest, I feel angry and I'm unsure how to respond.

Who holds our faith when fears arise?

Who stands above the stormy trial?

So what happens when in the face of human suffering, the fire of hope in eternity fades? What happens when the words of our worship songs sit like stones in our chest? A quiet hallelujah is barely uttered and the fiery darts of the enemy slide in behind our breastplate. Why do we endure and keep searching for some measure of hope? Because right there in the middle of our suffering is a promise: we will feast in endless joy.

And what reward will heaven bring?
Everlasting life with him
And we will rise to meet the Lord
Then sin and death will be destroyed

Maybe you face another kind of agony that is closer to home. Alzheimer's, dementia, ALS, Parkinson's, Cancer: these are the names of afflictions so distant for many and a real-life battlefield for others. When you are on the battlefield, it is easy to feel helpless, hopeless, and numb. Where is the hope in that?

This is the plight of our human condition: everyone bleeds. Human suffering is unavoidable. No one escapes hardship -- in some form, at some time. We cannot look here for our hope. Earthly hope does not endure. It fades, disappoints, and dies.

"Christ has been raised from the dead" (1 Cor 15:20).

That is the only statement that can transform how we live each day and how we prepare for our earthly life to end. To find comfort in life, we must know how we can face death. Hope comes only in trusting the one who died to take the curse of death and who crushed the power of death by His resurrection. See Getty Music.

We all experience suffering as our earthly bodies waste away, but we hold fast to a promise that is unfading, protected by the resurrection. One day, we will feast at His banqueting table. Can you feel that truth settling into your heart? Like a healing balm of comfort, God says, "take my gift and have endless joy."

And the God of all grace, who called you
to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have
suffered a little while, will himself restore you
and make you strong, firm and steadfast.
To him be the power for ever and ever.
Amen. 1 Peter 5:10,11

Don't sit in silence. Tell yourself both sides of the story. We will have suffering and there is a promise. Worship through the grief and find the promised hope. Breakthroughs come when hearts break open.

Tracey Dahl, M.A. is a writer and Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) in Langley, BC (Canada). She is married to Ryan Dahl (Founder of PraiseCharts) and the mother of four grown children. Christ Our Hope in Life and Death is a modern hymn written by Keith Getty, Jordan Kauflin, Matt Papa, Matt Boswell, and Matthew Merker (Getty Music). Words inspired by the Heidelberg Catechism.