Earlier this year, I turned 40. Traditionally, it’s an age when many of us start thinking more about the end of our lives than the beginning of them.

Okay, so I know in the scheme of things, 40’s probably not that old, but hitting that milestone in a season such as we are all living has been a powerful dose of the fragility of life on this earth.

If I’m being real, there are many days when I feel everything inside me and around me falling apart at the seams, like an out of control merry-go-round. It’s all got my head spinning.

So, when you hit this stage in life, and the world around you feels in uncontrollable chaos, what do you hold onto?

There are so many things in this life that we try to attach our hopes to, internally and externally.

Money? Economies rise and fall, careers come and go, and catastrophes can take away everything we’ve worked for.

Stuff? Cars break down, houses age, clothes fall apart, and even the most well-designed technological gadgets die eventually.

Fitness? Bodies age and we’re all going to leave this life eventually.

Leaders? They’re just as flawed, just as human as you and me. They’re not always going to do what’s right, no matter what side of the aisle they’re on.

Entertainment? Even the brightest stars fade and the greatest champions trail off into obscurity, eventually.

Okay, so I know this sounds defeatist, but you know what? All of this is actually really good news for all of us. How?

Because when all else fades, when all is stripped away, when the rope you are hanging by is down to it’s last strand, there is a hope to grasp that will never fail us.

“Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city,” David writes in Psalm 31:21, in the midst of some of his darkest hours.

There are so many references in His word to the everlasting hope of the Lord, countless references to His steadfast love.

It comes down to this - the God who created everything, including me, loved me enough to die in my place, and has, time and again, picked up the broken pieces of my heart and put them back together. Whenever my world has been in chaos, he has always been the steadying force Who brought me a peace and love I could not find in anything else. 

We were never meant to grasp tightly to this world, because there’s nothing in it that can save us. 

But in His steadfast love, there is a peace that lasts, a hope that even the worst the world has to offer can never take away.

Daniel Kiewel is a reporter with the Great Bend Tribune. He can be reached at dkiewel@gbtribune.com.