Life is not fair. It is not easy, and it is certainly not comfortable. OK. I could have found more encouraging words with which start today, but I wonder if maybe this is where we need to start. I am beginning to wonder if somehow many of us in American Christianity have bought into the idea that following Christ should somehow make life easier and more comfortable. I am beginning to wonder because in the past several months pain and suffering have come home to roost in my own life and I find myself a bit shocked and surprised. Family members have made choices with consequences that have rippled into my life and the life of my family. I have entered a season in my life that some spiritual authors would call a season of desolation a time in which God purposefully distances Himself, and winter is coming. For me, winter in Rochester brings my own private form of pain and suffering. My innate and reflexive response seems to be to approach God as one who protects me from pain and suffering, or at the least to approach Him as one who delivers me from the experience of such. It seems difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that God would want anything for me other than my happiness and well-being, as I define it of course. I want to say, “Come on God. Can I have a bit of a break here?” God hasn’t chosen to give me a break so I am beginning to wonder if that is what God wants. Actually I have begun to poke around and test the unspoken hypothesis that God wants me to be happy and free from suffering. What if God does not want us to be free from these? What if God does not exist to deliver us from suffering but what if He intentionally allows us to suffer? What if there is actually purpose in pain?

I’ve been wrestling with these questions as of late. I’ve come to recognize that these are actually huge questions, questions that theologians and scholars have wrestled with for centuries. These are questions that reach back all the way to the text of Job, probably the oldest book in our Bible. They are questions that people have struggled to answer for as long as we have walked the earth, so I am under no illusion that I can answer them in a simple blog post. I don’t know if we will ever fully understand the purpose of suffering in God’s handling of the universe. In His sovereignty, God has allowed pain and suffering to continue even though we know that He will one day eliminate it (Revelation 21-22). In the present it seems that there is purpose, but what is it? I’ll leave the deep theological arguments for those who are better suited to handle them. Rather, I’d like to recount how  the experience of pain and suffering is working in my life how I am learning to handle these experiences.

The experience of suffering is something I would never recommend that you relish or seek out. However, I am learning that it can have effects that work to deepen and enliven our faith. Here’s what I am learning.

• Suffering can illustrate areas of self-dependence and arrogance: In our pain and suffering we come to an end of ourselves only to discover that we have been living by our own strength rather than by God’s grace. I usually discover this in the prayers I utter that begin something like, “I just can’t deal with this anymore,” to which God usually answers, “Good. You weren’t meant to handle it anyway.” Suffering works to remove my illusion of control and sufficiency in life and replaces it with the reality that I am in need of a constant and steady supply of God’s grace to survive. In a way, it’s tough love for a hard-headed fellow who needs to learn he isn’t meant to go it alone.
• Pain and suffering can purify our faith: Pain and suffering seem to have a purifying effect in my life. Suffering cleanses me of the idols of my heart as I discover that these in no way bring comfort or release. For me the idols of my heart center on image management, how others think of me. The interesting thing is that in pain and suffering, no amount of image control helps. In fact, it becomes increasingly painful to maintain image as I simply don’t have the resources. Serving the idol of my heart only brings more pain, so I let it go and in letting it go I find comfort.
• Suffering can increase our hunger for God: Suffering in life often brings me to the point that I ask where God is and what He is doing in the midst of my pain. Maybe it does the same for you. Pain and suffering initiates a quest in my life, one in which I search for God. Sometimes it is searching for the God I feel I used to know. Other times it is searching for God period. The point is that I am searching. In that search I find that I don’t want the things of God but I just want God. His presence is enough.

While the experience of suffering and pain is in nowise something the child of God should seek—I don’t recommend it—I  am learning it is an experience through which we can grow. Because I see growth in and through suffering, I am discovering that it is an experience that can have purpose and meaning. However, I have found that purpose and meaning in suffering is found through surrender, not to the pain and suffering but to God and His purposes. It is when I stop fighting the pain and suffering and start surrendering to God that the real transformation starts happening. It is in surrender that I allow God to be God and to work as He wishes in my life. It is in surrender that I release my desires for life and crucify the expectation of freedom and comfort. I lay down my life and find that I am enabled to follow after Christ and share in his sufferings. Through these sufferings I am learning that I am sustained and never alone, and that those who share in his sufferings open themselves to a mighty work that enables them to share in his glories (Romans 8.17).  

A fellow traveler,

Blake
Spiritual Formation Pastor