Everywhere we look, it seems the temperature of the times grow more chaotic. And with the passing of time, problems seem to grow in degrees of difficulty.

Talking to many people, there’s a sense of being fiercely overwhelmed by it all, almost a heaviness if you will.

The reality is no one’s exempt from experiencing problems at any given time, without warning, and seemingly for no particular reason.

Let’s face it, bad things happen to us all and there’s not always a human explanation capable of creating an understanding that puts problems into proper prospective.

This train of thought prompts the recall of many problems I hear about daily: Broken marriages, homicides, car fatalities, head injuries, rare diseases or disability diagnosis or being on the receiving end of a call informing you about a suicide.

Life can be tragic at times. Pretending these kinds of problems are not real or won’t ever happen to you only aggravates matters. Life’s not fair and sometimes it rages like an untamable fever, raw and in your face.

In these moments, there’s no redo, no amount of bargaining or trying to trade places. No amount of denial, in all its forms, can take away some problems.

They’re just here to stay.

Don’t believe me, ask Josh, my son with Down syndrome. It’s part of his DNA. Or consider the child with moderate autism who’s surrounded by a world full of typical kids whose denial perpetuate problems by minimizing real issues while convincing themselves they know what’s best.

When we honestly survey what’s going on in the world, it’s like looking at the aftermath of an F-5 tornado. It’s heart wrenching chaos. A twisted, mangled web of debris is all that’s left of what once represented people’s lives.

I grew up in Tornado Alley and have seen the devastation tornados leave behind. It’s impossible to make sense out of the wreckage that once was families and communities left in complete chaos.

That’s what major problems feel like.

So how in the world are we to find any room for possibilities in this kind of broken world?

I remember one summer I visited my grandparents for two weeks. It was heaven. I don’t remember everything clearly about those weeks, except one thing. My grandmother was working on a cross-stitch project. Every time I asked about what she was doing, she’d just say, “You’ll see.”

It bothered me all the stitches were just a jumbled mess of colored thread. It looked like someone scribbling on material for no reason. It really bothered me, because she was a particular homemaker and this seemed beneath her.

Every time I expressed concern, she assured me I needed to wait and see and when it was finished it would make sense.

I wasn’t buying it and was concerned about the crude unrecognizable mess that was eventually supposed to form some kind of meaningful work of art. Toward my visit’s end, I pressed her about her craft and she reassured me I needed to wait and see.

Finally, the day came to go home. I went back one last time to see if she had finished and she smiled and said, “I told you just wait and see.”

As she held the finished craft, I was mortified. It looked worse than when I first saw it. My heart sank.

Then she flipped it over and there was a totally different creation on the other side.

I was so relieved she still had her sanity and couldn’t get over the difference in the two sides. The side I’d been seeing the whole time was a meaningless bunch of loose strings totally out of sync with one another, but the side she knew was always there was a house surrounded by flowers and the words “Home Sweet Home” on it.

Humanly speaking, some problems seemingly have no solutions until you catch a glimpse from the other side. And suddenly, from the new vantage point, even the most meaningless messes now make perfect sense.

An ancient writer once said, “God has placed eternity in the hearts of men.”

There seems to be something in all of us desperate to make sense of the seemingly unfair and painful problems allowed to touch our lives. In your overwhelming problems and chaotic moments of unfair human difficulties, may you catch a glimpse of what’s actually going on from the “Home Sweet Home” side.

Then meaningless human problems will turn into meaningful eternal possibilities. As you glimpse the other side may the possibilities of eternity be placed in the problematic hearts of all men.

Dr. T.J. Kimble of Radcliff is a clinical pastoral counselor. He can be reached attj@yourbestlifenowcounseling.com.