Trust God with your terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
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"Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" by Judith Viorst was one of my favorite books as a child. Alexander woke up on the wrong side of the bed with gum in his hair, and every page of the book chronicles how everything that can go wrong in the daily life of a young boy did go wrong for Alexander. I got picked on a lot as a kid and I had more than a few bad days myself. There was always something cathartic about someone else's bad day.
It seems the great unfairness of life causes those days to get worse and worse as we get older. As a child, waking up with gum in your hair, sitting in the middle seat in the car, eating a bad lunch, falling in mud and going to the dentist are the worst things that could happen. Lima beans for dinner are catastrophic to a child. As an adult, though, I'd take a day like that over some of the days I had last week. For instance, my truck died last Tuesday. The engine completely seized. We could not afford to fix it, and we could barely afford to replace it. What a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
More than that, I wasn't the only one that day. Misery doesn't love company. Company annoys misery. I have to confess the thought, "Oh yeah, well your day isn't half as bad as mine" went through my head more than once.
One friend was having trouble with his significant other. Another's home air conditioning unit broke. Still another was dealing with conflict at work. It seemed like everyone around me was having the same kind of bad day I was.
I know for certain I didn't handle my bad day well, I'm fairly sure my friends didn't do much better, and I suspect your bad days expose the same ugly parts of your character as they do mine. Next time one of those days hits, though, I want to be ready. I know one of those days is coming for you too, so let's prepare together.
As I deal with the fallout of my own bad day, it occurred to me that we have a choice to make every time the bad day comes. The moment the day turns bad, we must decide whether God is still God or not.
If he isn't, despair. There is no hope. But if he is, take heart. He has already overcome the world. Jesus promised both the hope and the trouble together when he said, "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). Without hope, the trouble would be unbearable, but without trouble, the hope would be meaningless.
In every conversation about a bad day and the Bible, Job has to be discussed. It seems God included this book in Scripture to answer the question of the bad day specifically.
Job, you'll recall, lost everything: crops, animals, children, servants and houses. Everything. Then he got sick with a painful skin disease. When his unhelpful friends let him get a word in edgewise, he begged for the opportunity to ask God to explain himself.
It seemed like the explanation was simple enough. As readers, we are fortunate enough to be aware of the conversation God had with Satan at the beginning of the book that led to Job's misfortunes. But God never gives the same grace to Job. Instead, when Job finally has the opportunity to question God about his plight, God's answer is actually a little sarcastic, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements — surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?" (Job 38:4-5) and "Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars and spreads his wings toward the south?" (Job 39:26). God questions Job like this for two chapters. The non-sarcastic translation of God's litany of rhetorical questions is: "Look at all the great and wondrous things I can do. Do you really not think I can handle your bad day? Am I God or not?"
And we know that God ultimately restored Job. He continued to give Job days, and even gave him good ones.
At the end of Alexander's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, he goes back to sleep. The reader imagines him waking up the next day to a better day. The bad days always end. God will always proves himself good.
So if you find yourself in the middle of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, decide that God is still God and that you can trust him. Let that govern your day.
If you're still waiting on your bad day, decide now to live it well by trusting in the one who makes the day start as surely as he'll make it end.