I’ve been challenged, friends. Challenged to love my suffering.
Woof.
Human suffering is one of the most questioned parts of our existence. We watch helplessly as children starve, natural disasters wreak havoc, and human beings destroy one another. We can’t make any sense of it. We can’t shake the fear of the inevitable pain we will endure. We can’t look into the face of suffering and see, at the same time, the face of love. How can God ask us to embrace suffering? How can God use pain for His Glory?
I’m certainly not educated enough or thoughtful enough to conquer the most popular question in all of human history, but I do have the ability to share a little bit of my own perspective. Take it or leave it.
Firstly, I’d like to remark upon the fact that God knows a thing or two about suffering. What He endured on the Cross has historically been marked as one of the most gruesome, torturous deaths. According to Brant Pitre, “the Roman practice of execution by crucifixion was widely considered to be one of the cruelest and most shameful ways a person could die” (101). Why would God choose to die in this manner? What could He possibly hope to gain from this humiliating, dreadful demise?
While Christ died, He showed the extent of His compassion for all mankind. It wasn’t His death on the Cross that displayed this crazy love, however. It was His suffering. It was the physical brutality, the emotional abuse, and the pure humiliation that Christ endured. He did this for the sake of love. Tragedy and horror somehow produced a passionate, vivacious, unconditional love. This makes no sense to me. I can’t understand even the shallow end of this infinite grace and mercy. Perhaps I will never be contented to it’s incredible mystery. All I know is how thankful I am for it.
But what of our own suffering? Christ’s suffering may birth a beautiful and perfect love for the wretchedness of mankind (to which we cannot fully grasp), but why must we suffer?
To this I can only reference my own experience. Trust me, I know nothing of true suffering, so to those who do, I pray you don’t presume that I’m dramatizing my own pain. But I will say this…pain is pain, no matter who endures it, where they encounter it, and to what extent they experience it.
I’m in a season of life where I’m required to ask for help. To be specific, financial and spiritual help. This may not seem like deep suffering, but to my stubborn, prideful heart, it is. Anxiety digs it’s vicious claws into my back every day. As I go through this terribly humbling season, it hurts. A lot. Why? God’s answer for me is so simple, yet so commonly misunderstood by those who encounter a deeper, more heart-wrenching form of suffering.
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18)
Not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed? Key words: Glory and will be. If our entire existence is meant to glorify the Creator of all things, then our pain must take an equal share in that glorifying process. As much as we glorify Him in our joy, we must glorify Him in our pain. Easier said than done. And this is not something we can comprehend while we endure it. It will be revealed. We will see God’s glory. We will understand after fighting through the confusion, angst, and horror that this suffering produces.
“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4)
What comes of suffering is something intangible, but so remarkably powerful: hope. While we suffer, the fires of hope are being ignited. The more we endure, the more we intensify our gaze upon the One who gives us that hope. With Hell raging all around us, all we can do is keep our eyes upon the hope of Jesus Christ. We look to the One who is not absent from our suffering. He is right in the middle of it and one step ahead of us.
“Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:38)
Heavens to Betsy, that’s a rough one. Whoever does not take up their cross… their burdens… their hardships… their brokenness… is not worthy of Him. I ache at the thought of these words spilling from the precious, holy, unblemished mouth of my Jesus. To be worthy of Him is to embrace my Cross…my own crucifixion…my own suffering. This is troubling, yet there is such a hope embedded into this scripture: FOLLOW ME. Jesus, who carried His cross as both a symbol and reality of His present pain, calls us to follow Him to the place where sin dies, but HE LIVES! Suffering is not the end. It is not even a means to an end. It is the way in which we know Christ. On the road of suffering, we are discovering the character of Jesus! This is incredible when you think about it.
Maybe this doesn’t answer the question as to why we must suffer; pain is still pain, and it’s the most realistic thing in the world to question it’s purpose. However, I’ve come to realize that to suffer is to know Jesus in a way that we can’t know Him in times of placidity or peace. This is the hardest, albeit most strengthening lesson we can ever learn, and I still have yet to embrace it; but what a comfort it is to know that I am never alone in the midst of it. Jesus goes before me, enduring the onslaught of misery and heartache, and I am simply asked to follow Him. And as I follow Him, I discover Him. I encounter Him. I’m awakened to the Love that He has for me because of the Cross. What we endure might be unthinkable, but “is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us.” Praise Jesus.