God’s gifts in suffering (8) Suffering teaches us to number our days

All our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away…
So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Ps 90:9-10, 12)

When you’re young, life seems long and full of promise. A young woman told me she hopes Jesus doesn’t come back till she’s experienced career, marriage, children. I remember thinking the same when I was eighteen. Life stretched ahead, and I wanted to see and do it all. Can you recall it? Standing at the brink, ready to plunge in?

As you get older, life sometimes seems very sharp and short. Family members become ill. Friends get divorced. Parents age. We go to more funerals. We grow weary of the long battle with sin. On the bad days, when another burden is added, we wonder if we can bear any more. The years that once seemed endless now speed past, and they are often full of pain.

Who is to say that we do not now see things more clearly? Like a flower of the field, we flourish and are quickly gone (Psalm 103:15-16). Life is vanity; it passes like a shadow; generations comes and go, and we are forgotten (Ecc 1:1-4; 6:12). Our days are filled with toil and trouble; they are soon ended, and we fly away (Psalm 90:10).

One of the great blessings of suffering – though perhaps not the most welcome – is that we come to see this more clearly. We’d rather be comfortable in this world, but suffering, mercifully, doesn’t allow it. We share this world’s groaning, and realize what has been clear to most people throughout history. Our hearts as well as our heads now know the truth: in the light of eternity, this life is a blip and a shadow.

This whispers to us of another truth: we are not made for this world. If we were, CS Lewis asked, would we not feel at home?1 Yet we don’t, except perhaps on the most sunshiny days, and even then we are haunted by incompleteness. Always, there is the longing for something more. We feel this acutely, for God has placed eternity in our hearts (Ecc 3:11).

Suffering fuels this longing. It takes us by the hand and says, “Look! There is something better!”. We hold so tightly to this world, but suffering loosens our grip. It reminds us that we’d better not store our treasures here, for they can and will be taken from us. It weans us from this life, and sets our hope on the life to come. And this hope will not disappoint us (Rom 5:5). We will open our eyes on a new creation. The morning is coming.

Have you seen it? Can you picture it? There it is: a golden city, so bright it would hurt your eyes if they, like the rest of your body, weren’t strong and new (Phil 3:21). In the heart of this city, God and the Lamb – the one we love, the one who died for us – sit on the throne. A river runs from the throne, its waters giving life. And look! There’s the tree of life, heavy with new fruit each month, its leaves healing hurts (Rev 22:1-5). Once more, God walks with us in the cool of the day; and this time we have no need to hide (Gen 3:8). Seeing him with open faces, we are at last like him (1 Cor 13:12; 1 John 3:2). Here there is no hint of sorrow, no mark of pain:

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Rev 21:3-4).

It’s better than we knew it could be. We are home.

I read the words, “There will be no more tears…”, and tears run down my face. For this is our waiting time, our season of groaning, our period of exile (Rom 8:18-27; Phil 3:20; 1 Pet 2:11). We long for the day of Christ’s appearing (2 Tim 4:8). We yearn for our true country (Heb 11:16). We seek the things that are above (Col 3:1-4).

The other day, I was standing at the kitchen bench, cutting vegetables, when I noticed my hands were trembling. It was one of those times when the weight of a long struggle presses down, and you know your strength is not enough to carry you. In that moment, as he has so often before, the Spirit brought these verses to mind:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor 4:16-18)

If there’s one thing suffering has taught me, it’s that we don’t really belong here. It has taught me to fix my eyes on the unseen. It has taught me to long and live for our true home.

Come, Lord Jesus. (Rev 22:20)


1. “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” CS Lewis, Mere Christianity ↩

God’s gifts in suffering (7) Two unchanging things

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy! ...
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope.
(Psalm 130:1-2, 5)

There’s something about certain Christian books on suffering that bugs me. I’m just going to come out and say it. The writer tells you how suffering deepened his feelings of closeness to God. How a sense of God’s presence never really left her. They imply, and sometimes even promise, you’ll feel the same. I’ve finished paragraphs like that with tears running down my cheeks, longing for what I’m reading about, angry at God for failing to deliver, wondering what’s missing in me.

I want to tell you the truth about suffering, and most people who have experienced pain will know this. At the time, it doesn’t often feel joyful. It doesn’t feel peaceful. It feels messy and agonizing and endless. You tumble from wave to wave. Your doubt everything: yourself, those around you, your God. There is darkness and a roaring confusion and no voice, not even a whisper, in the dark.

God’s word is more honest about this than we often dare to be. In the book of Job, Lamentations, the Psalms, we find agony and questions and a cry to God – “Why?”. The writers could be us, they know so well how we feel:

Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
(Psalm 42:7)

What will we cling to when we are tossed to and fro and there is no solid ground? When the Bible’s words about joy in suffering are a world away from what we feel?1 When every word we read about “what God did for me” seems to mock our experience?

Late last year, at the end of the hardest year, I sat at a table in a cafe and poured questions into my journal. Where were you, God? Why didn’t I feel this? Why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you come through for me?

If you could read those pages (and I’m glad you can’t!) you would come to these words, written at the moment when I grasped what I have gained:

There have been no visions, no sudden healings, no firework displays in the dark. I don’t feel like I’ve got some extra glimpse into the heart of God.

But I have learned what I can rely on – the promises of God, the bedrock truths of his word. I have dug down to them, because there was nothing else. The cross of Christ: that one inarguable fact. That he has the answers even when he doesn’t give them to me.

I may not feel it. But I know it. And I am still here, still holding on.

That is the miracle.

How often I begged for feelings! How much I longed for a miracle! And how wise God was to say "no" to my prayers! For as I wrote those words I realized that he has given me a greater gift. He has given me two unchanging things, like hands holding me:

• God’s word. “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope” (Psalm 130:5). Again and again I have gone back to God’s word and reminded myself of his his character. He will never leave me or forsake me (Heb 13:5). He will bring good out of this (Rom 8:28). Nothing can separate me from his love (Rom 8:38-39). His promises are true even when I don’t felt them.
• The cross. Jesus knew physical agony. He knew what it was to be deserted and shamed. He knew the horror of the silent sky. He is our merciful High Priest, seasoned by pain, loving with tender sympathy (Heb. 4:14-16). All the big questions about suffering find their answer in this: Jesus died for us. He isn’t indifferent to our pain. He endured suffering so he could deal with suffering. He is bringing it to an end.

At that moment in the cafe, stripped of the things I usually rely on – emotions, experience, deliverance – I came to see that these two unchanging things have been solid ground under my feet, tested and proven to be strong.

You dig. The dirt flies round your ears. You dig. It’s dark down here, the air is musty, and the ground shifts beneath your feet. You dig. Your arms jar, and there’s a ringing sound as your spade hits rock. You can’t dig any deeper. You’re not going anywhere. This rock is immoveable.

What I once saw as a curse was actually a severe mercy, for I have learned what I can rely on. Without feelings, I have been taught, instead, to trust.


1. Romans 5:3-4; James 1:2-4. I’d like to write more about these verses in a later post.

This post was first published at The Briefing.

a thought that didn't make it into yesterday's post

Yesterday's post was a doozy (now there's a word spell check doesn't know - apparently it should be d oozy).

It was hard to think through, hard to write, hard to pull together into something readable and not completely yawn inducing. And I'm still not sure I succeeded at that (no, I'm not looking for reassurance).

Anyhow, I cut a paragraph out (below). Interesting thoughts, but the post was already too long, and I wasn't sure if

• anyone else was asking the questions I was 
• I was on the right track
• any readers I still had would be lost in my mental tangle.

Here's the paragraph that didn't make it in. If you're interested, it belongs in yesterday's post after the second paragraph.

When the Bible doesn't give the guarantee you want, other Christians might. Perhaps they suggest God will heal you if you have enough faith, or (more subtly) if you pray the right kind of prayer. And then there are Christian truisms that promise a limit to pain: "God will only give us as much suffering as is necessary." There's something true and good about this statement. As one man put it, "God is too kind to cause us unnecessary pain."1 But necessary for what? To help us grow? That's what I've always assumed; but it's not in the Bible. Wouldn't this mean that the godliest Christians would suffer less, because they don't need to grow as much? (Jesus won't allow this - see Luke 13:1-5.) Aren't there other reasons for suffering besides my personal growth? (Yes, like God's glory, or to fit us for service - look at John 9:1-3 and 2 Cor 1:3-5.)

Happy to hear your thoughts on the whole "God doesn't cause more pain than is necessary" thing. Just click here and comment away.


1. Paul Mallard, Invest your suffering, 48.

God’s gifts in suffering (6) God gives us strength to endure, not escape

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:9-10)

I know what I want. I told God so today. I’d like a guarantee that things are going to get better. We’ve reached the end of this particular time of suffering. Happiness is on the other side of the door, knocking. But the days go by, and, yes, things do get better – my son learns to manage his condition, my sorrow and bewilderment retreat – but life is still draining and difficult. Tears are never far away. We’re not yet in the land where leaves heal sorrow (Rev 22:1-4).

Maybe I’ll find the guarantee I want in the Bible. Here’s a promise that sounds like a talisman against pain: “If you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you” (Psalm 91:9-10 NIV). But what does it mean? There are other psalms that lament the fact that harm does come to God’s people.¹ Kidner says of this promise, “This is a statement of exact, minute providence, not a charm against adversity”.² Every moment, God provides for us, or I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this, and you wouldn’t be reading it. God’s people are surrounded by walls of protection. Nothing can truly harm us in the places that matter. But this isn’t a guarantee that we will experience no pain. It’s a promise that everything that comes to us, including our trials, is part of God’s fatherly, detailed care. Our Father will keep us safe, and he will keep us to the end.³

The truth is that God doesn’t promise certain limits to suffering. He doesn’t guarantee personal happiness. He doesn’t ensure our escape from pain. His people are often crushed beyond measure: the Bible makes that abundantly clear.⁴ Here are some guarantees God’s word does give us:

• Suffering will come, but we will also share in Christ’s glory (1 Peter 4:12-13).
• All that happens will be for our good, to make us more like Jesus (Rom 8:28-30).
• Nothing can ever separate us from God’s love (Rom 8:38-39).
• He won’t let us be tempted – that is, tested – beyond what we can bear, but will provide a way for us to endure it (1 Cor 10:13).
• He will give us all we need for life and godliness (2 Pet 1:3)
• In our weakness, he will give us strength (2 Cor 12:9-10 cf 2 Cor 4:7-12; Phil 4:11-13; Col 1:11-14).

The last one intrigues me, because it doesn’t feel true in my experience. I once asked my husband why, if God gives us strength, I still feel so weak. He explained that it’s not freedom from weakness that God usually gives, but strength in weakness – the strength to keep obeying and serving even when I feel tired and overwhelmed and like I can’t go on. If God made me strong, all people would see was my strength, and I would become proud. But when he enables me to endure even when I am weak, people can see that the strength is from him, and I am made humble and dependent. He gets the glory, not me.

Paul knew this paradoxical truth from the inside out. When he begged God to take away the thorn in his flesh, Christ said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). The point isn’t that Paul rose above his pain: the point is that he was still weak, but Christ gave him strength to stand firm and press on. Paul was no triumphant victor over suffering: he was a man who feared and trembled, who was whipped and stoned and hungry, who was imprisoned and deserted by his friends (1 Cor 2:3; 2 Cor 11:23-29; 2 Tim 4:16). He said of his time in Asia,

We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself … But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. (2 Cor 1:8-9)

Paul felt his weakness deeply. He knew exactly where his strength came from.

I’d like God’s power. I’d love to feel strong. But be careful what you ask for. Here is Paul’s prayer for power: "May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy" (Col 1:9). The strength to endure patiently: it doesn’t sound all that powerful, and we don’t greatly value it. Who would choose the quality of patient endurance? Who wouldn’t rather have victory over pain? We want the success story, the inspirational tale of goals achieved and obstacles overcome. Yet patient endurance is highly valued by God: just do a word search and see how often it’s mentioned in the Bible (e.g. 2 Cor 1:6; Col 1:11; 2 Tim 2:12; Heb 12:3; 1 Pet 2:19-20; Rev 2:3, 13:10). He demanded it of Moses and Job and Jeremiah. He demanded it of Stephen and Peter and John. He demands it of our persecuted brothers and sisters. He demands it of us.

So what’s the secret? Where can we get endurance, this quality of such great value? How does God produce it in us? I hesitate to say it, but here’s the thing: he does it through suffering (James 1:2-4). It’s by standing firm that we learn to stand. It’s by enduring that we learn to endure. Our spiritual muscles grow strong through use. It never feels like it at the time: I was horrified at how short-tempered I could be when sleep deprivation and babies came into my life. It was only later that I realized I was responding to difficulties with a greater degree of patience, perseverance, and even, finally, hope. (I’ve still got a long way to go before I respond with joy – see Romans 5:3-4)

So this is what I pray for: not a guarantee of happiness, but the strength to endure. The strength to go on when I feel like I can’t take another step. The strength to trust when I am filled with doubt and fear. The strength to stand firm when everything in me is crying out to give in. The strength to bear my responsibilities cheerfully and well, not with bitterness or grumbling resignation. The strength to rejoice, even as I mourn. The strength to seek God’s face, to find my security in him:

I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.” (Psalm 91:2)

1. You only have to flip the numbers of psalm 37 – “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” – to get psalm 73 – “All in vain have I kept my heart clean…all the day long I have been stricken”.
2. Derek Kidner, Psalms 73-150, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, p. 333; and see John Piper’s post on psalm 91. Other helpful insights can be found in the commentaries on the psalms by John Goldingay (Baker Commentary) and Willem VanGemeren (Expositor’s Bible Commentary).
3. On God’s fatherly care, see Matthew 6:19-34 and Romans 8:28-39, and compare Luke 21:16 and 21:18. On our eternal security, see John 10:28 and Phil 1:6.
4. See Paul Mallard, Invest your suffering, p. 80.

God’s gifts in suffering (5) Suffering shows us what we truly fear to lose

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7)

I’ve been listening to my fears. I’ve been imagining dire possibilities. Every medical article, every story of hardship, every description of suffering, seems a pointer to our future, a list of what-might-be. There are times when I lie face down on the carpet, sick to the gut, held down by a blank, black dread. I knew that I would cry, but fear? It seems a strange accompaniment to sorrow.

I don’t feel safe anymore. I think it works like this: in suffering, one of the things you most feared has come to you. And if it has, there’s no longer any guarantee that such-and-such won’t happen. That so-and-so won’t be taken away. Life has been shaken to its roots, your comfortable expectations scattered like fallen fruit.

There’s a moment I remember clearly. I’m standing at the end of the hallway, holding my baby son, cocooned in wraps and ready for bed. I gaze at his face, soft and crumpled with newness, and suddenly all that he might become, all the glowing possibilities, flash before my eyes. There is a world of potential futures in this tiny bundle.

Chronic illness has stolen so much from us, things most parents take for granted, school days and childhood play and time with friends. It has the potential to take away so much more. Once I lived with the comfortable illusion that my decisions and carefully protected goodness could control the outcome. Now I know how vulnerable we are, how easily the things we hold can be taken away, and I am afraid.

Look closely at your fears, and you’ll see the mirror-image of your idols, what you count as happiness, what you hold most tightly. The things we think we can’t live without: security, success, control, peace, usefulness, happiness. The places we look for them: family, money, health, career, friendship, children, marriage. Suffering threatens and thus reveals the things we trust in. It loosens our grip and invites us to cling to God instead.

My son is now twelve years old. I’m standing on a bridge alone, and hoping to stay that way. People pass, but I keep my back to them, hiding my face. I lean on the rail and my tears drop into the river. They travel downstream with the twigs and the bubbles and the little eddies around the stones. Once again, my dreams for my son’s future flash before my eyes, but this time I take each one, let it fall, and watch it float away until it’s lost to view around the bend.

It feels hard but good, this giving up, this letting go. My dreams belong where all dreams belong, in the hands of God. My fears belong there too (1 Pet 5:6-7). My future – our family’s future – is in his hands. The things I think God owes me were never mine to begin with. The things I thought I could hold on to were never under my control.

I’d like some guarantees: this much, and no more. Instead, what I have is this: the assurance that a sovereign God has ordained every one of our days, that nothing else counts compared to knowing him, that what matters is not our comfort, but his glory. It’s not a convenient knowledge. It’s not easily come by. But I choose to believe that it’s enough.

And as I choose to believe, here in the dark, he opens his heart to me. The one who gave up his Son for us is tender and generous in his love, not capricious or cruel. He rejoices over his people with singing (Zeph 3:17). Our names are written on his hands (Isa 49:16). He shelters us under his wings (Ps 91:4). We are never out of his thoughts.1 I begin to know – I’m just at the beginning of knowing – that, whatever happens, we are safe here with him.


1. A few books bring this home to me: JI Packer’s Knowing God, particularly this quote; Cs Lewis’ “He’s not safe, but he’s good”, from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; and Ed Welch’s reminder of “God’s generosity and attention to detail” in Running Scared (p. 109). ↩

God’s gifts in suffering (4) Suffering deepens our knowledge of God

For I know that the Lord is great,
and that our Lord is above all gods.
Whatever the Lord pleases, he does,
in heaven and on earth,
in the seas and all deeps. (Psalm 135:5,6)

I write this post with a heavy heart, because we are neck-deep in this particular season of suffering. It’s not showing any signs of letting up, at least for now. It’s only bearable because God no longer seems like a stranger.

Of all the effects of suffering, this is one of the most disquieting: the God I meet in suffering is different from the God I thought I knew. It’s as if you turn to a friend and catch an expression on their face that you never expected to see there. Your wife of twenty years does something so completely out of character that you wonder if you really know her. Your father turns out to be fundamentally different to the man you loved and respected all these years.

The fault, of course, doesn’t lie with God. It never did. It’s that we live with unconscious assumptions about God and his dealings towards us, beliefs that would probably horrify us if we pulled them into the light (“I am exempt.” “God will do what I ask.” “That would never happen to me.”). So we leave our assumptions hidden and unquestioned, where they lend us a kind of empty comfort. The worst will never come, because… (here we fill in our own A, B and C).

This can happen even if we are well-prepared, our theology of suffering carefully laid down. In my early 20s, I read How Long O Lord, because we were told that those who read this book would be ready for suffering when it came. There was great truth in that. I still repeat this lesson to those younger than me. I don’t know how I would have weathered this storm without a strong doctrine of God’s sovereignty and goodness in suffering. But it doesn’t matter how prepared you are, suffering always comes as a surprise.

The storm front approaches, but you don’t see it coming. The world crumbles, the earth shakes, and you cry out in shock. Cracks appear in your theology. Suffering forces its way in and wedges them apart. They grow bigger and bigger, until your view of God threatens to collapse like a house on the sand. Suffering shows you the weak points. It enlarges them and says, “There!”.

I’m sure the weak points are different for everyone, but in my case, as I watch my son trudge through days of pain, it doesn’t take long to realise there’s something odd about my view of God’s providence. I can’t understand why medicine helps but God, it seems, doesn’t. Is it that he can’t? Or that he won’t? I know it’s not the first, but I can’t quite get my head around the second.

My son’s doctors, on the other hand, seem eager to help. They can’t do much, but what they can do, they do. It’s the same with the people around me. So why does God seem so unwilling? Why is he depending on medicine, when he could heal with a single thought? At some level, a level I barely dare to acknowledge, I ask, “Doesn’t he want to? Is he powerless? Does he care?”

So I turn to the same place I turned to all those years ago. I open How Long O Lord and struggle through those last, difficult chapters on God’s providence. I begin to read Joni Tada Eareckson and Stephen Estes’ When God Weeps, and Paul Grimmond’s Suffering Well. I search the Scriptures, and painstakingly rebuild my theology, brick by brick, starting with these words by Don Carson:

A miracle is not an instance of God doing something for a change; it is an instance of God doing something out of the ordinary. That God normally operates the universe consistently makes science possible; that he does not always do so ought to keep science humble.1

An odd paragraph to bring so much comfort; but comfort me it does. I begin to see that the God who made and sustains the universe works through medicine as well as what we call “miracles”: they are both gifts direct from his hands. Health slowly and painstakingly regained, or never regained at all, is as much an indication of his love as instant healing. What he wants to do in us may take time and hardship. His plans for us are bigger and better than the ones we make for ourselves.

The God I am getting to know is no cheap-and-easy vending machine: put in a dollar, get out a chocolate bar. He’s our Father, wise beyond knowing. His mercy is severe and his love relentless. He may never give us what we ask for, and we may never know why; but this God, who gave his only Son to die for us, who knows suffering from the inside out, can be trusted to be just and loving and good. As my knowledge of him deepens, he no longer seems like a stranger. I run into his arms and find comfort and strength and a secure refuge (Ps 46:1).

The God I meet in suffering isn’t the God I thought I knew. He’s better.


1. Don Carson, How Long O Lord, page 217.

God’s gifts in suffering (3) suffering tests and refines our faith

In this [living hope] you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

I’m no Job. The words I used to sing so blithely, with such theoretical appreciation of their beauty, such bland conviction that I’d sing them whatever came – “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21)1 – don’t, apparently, spring to my lips when suffering comes. My lips are sealed, silent.

And that’s the first thing suffering teaches me about myself: my faith is weaker than I knew. I am riddled with doubt. I am shot through with unbelief. My trust in God is fragile.

When I was young, I thought of myself as strong. I would never lose my faith! I would never stumble! My obedience was sure, my faith certain. Life, at times, has felt like a successive stripping away of self-delusion. Tempt me, and I am prone to habitual sin. Test me, and I am prone to anger. Try me, and I am prone to unbelief.

Suffering brings me low, which is exactly where I need to be:

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:17)

Suffering undoes me. It unravels the pride and self-reliance that were woven together with my faith. What’s left is alarmingly slender, so it’s just as well that it’s God, not me, who holds me here. Faith hangs by a thread; yet it holds, tested and true, stronger than spider silk, for the One to whom it clings is faithful. When I am weak, God proves to be strong; and, seeing this, my faith grows stronger.

Suffering refines my faith. It becomes more resilient, less dependent on circumstances. I come one step closer to believing in God as he really is, not as I want him to be. I long for heaven, and the ties that bind me to this earth are loosened.

It’s true: suffering both tests and refines my faith. I’ll write more about the second of these in the weeks to come.


1. The song being Matt Redman’s Blessed be the name of the Lord.

God’s gifts in suffering (2) suffering reminds us that we are part of this fallen world

flickr: ulisse albiati

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom 8:22-23)

Deep down, in some hidden part of me, I think I’m exempt. I’m convinced that life isn’t meant to be this hard. That God owes me healing. That he owes my son relief. That the fact that I pray, “Heal my son!”, and he wakes up sick, calls God’s goodness into question.

I am astonished! dismayed! horrified! that God hasn’t stepped in and taken this away.

It shows how little I believed God when he told me suffering would come (1 Pet 4:12-13). That this life would sometimes feel long and weary (Eccles 1:1-11 cf. Gal 6:9; 2 Thess 3:13; Heb 12:3, 5). That those who follow God will get sick and not always be healed and will one day die (Acts 9:37; 2 Cor 12:7-10; Phil 2:26-27; 2 Tim 4:20).

That suffering actually hurts (Heb 12:11). That life in this fallen world will make us groan and sigh and weep (Ps 6:6-7, 90:9; 2 Cor 5:2-4). That the pattern of the Christian life is suffering then glory (Rom 8:18; 1 Pet 5:1). I believed all this in theory, but suffering rubs my face in the truth.

It also shows how myopic my vision is, how loveless my perspective, how self-absorbed my heart. I know, at some theoretical level, that people are suffering agonisingly across the world. I’ve watched the news. I’ve read the stories. Seemingly, other people’s suffering fits with my faith just fine.

But when suffering touches me and mine, it’s a different story. Suffering is a blunt instrument battering faith on the head. My faith reels. And the suffering of others begin to sweep in on me, to mean something to me.

We are part of this fallen, frightening world (Rom 8:18-25). We belong to those around us. When I suffer, it drives me to feel this, to pray with tears, to love. I realise I’m part of this place, and this is good.

It’s good that Christians aren’t exempt from the suffering of those around us. It’s good that we share it. Otherwise, how can we reach out to those around us? How can I weep with those who weep, unless I know what it is to weep (Rom 12:15)? How can I help the weak, unless I know myself to be weak?


This post first appeared at The Briefing

God's gifts in suffering (1) Introduction

flickr: Sadness by SashaW

Suffering. You don't know it till it's grabbed you by the neck and held you down for weeks, months, even years.

It drives out every subterfuge and scours out every illusion. It chases you into every corner and steals every illusion of control. It empties you of every vanity and robs you of every trace of self-reliance.

If you're stubborn like me, this takes some time. Your brain chases its tail, trying to invent reasons, explanations, answers. Your faith wilts and staggers. You doubt, question, beg. You cling to your strength. You don't quite let yourself cry. You say, "Help me, God", but what you mean is "Do what I want. Get rid of this! Now!". And when he doesn't, doubt sweeps in, dark and hovering.

Then the day comes when you wake up and know you can't do it any more. There are no excuses left. There are no explanations. There are no illusions. There's just you and God and sorrow.

I wake at 5 o'clock. For the first time in months, I weep until my eyes are puffy and red. There have been tears before, but not like this. I whimper into the dark, "I can't do this any more. I just can't do this!" All of me has been reduced, like stock in a pan, to a single cry.

And in that moment, at the bottom of the well, I begin to feel it: solid ground.

In the weeks ahead, in one sense, nothing changes. My son, after three years of increasing illness, is still sick. He wakes, every day, to pain. We find out that he has a chronic condition, and there's some clarity and a sense of purpose. There's also ongoing grief.

In another sense, everything changes. God's goodness is no longer a theory I struggle to believe, an equation that doesn't quite add up, a sentence I can't parse. Instead, it becomes real, tangible, precious. He is there, so close I swear I could reach out and touch him. Something in me lightens and lifts its face to his light.

I look back over the long months and begin to see how this has changed me. All of the Bible's words about suffering, that for so long sounded like ill-tuned bells in my ears, heard with gritted teeth and small appreciation, suddenly ring with a true chime, and I wonder that I was deaf to them before.

Today's post is the first in a series. I want to share the ways God is using suffering to transform me. I want to take his promises and clothe them in flesh. I want to talk about truths I couldn't have talked about a year ago, truths that only now speak to me. This is my testimony, my act of thanksgiving. For God is good, even and especially when we suffer, even when we can't see it.