A poster I saw this week has been stewing in my mind for the past few days. It said: Pain is inevitable, Suffering is optional. I’ve been playing it against the reality of the week for myself and for a number of my friends and family. Between us we’ve had major invasive surgery, chemotherapy that caused extreme nausea, severe back pain, a beloved grandfather die, minor aches and pains, a marriage painfully end, fleeing for your life because you’ve been put on a hit list because of your faith in God, and those are just the ones I can think of at the moment.
Pain is inevitable. I have no problem with that. It’s the suffering part that puzzles me. The dictionary defines it as “pain that is caused by injury, illness, loss, etc.: physical, mental, or emotional pain.” That sounds pretty inevitable to me as well. I know someone who was hurt so much as a young child that they have the ability to block pain to the point where they seem to step outside of themselves to avoid it, making it appear as if the pain is happening to someone else. That has taken them into some nearly disastrous situations. Pain is given to us as a warning that something is wrong. To ignore it is foolish.
The message the poster was trying to make is that dwelling or wallowing in pain is a choice. It should not become something that defines us.
It reminded me of visit we made to the Wedgewood factory on our second visit to England. As we walked through the section dedicated to showing us how this beautiful pottery is created, we stopped at the place where the intricate white ornamentations are made that decorate their signature blue or grey pieces. A small ball of white clay is placed in a mold and the artisan uses a wooden hammer with a two-and-a-half inch mallet-like head to pound the clay until it fills the mold. Using a pin, the clay is removed so it can be examined. If it conforms perfectly to the mold, it is set aside to dry. If not—if there is a bubble or a place where the clay failed to completely fill the design, it is rolled up into a ball and the whole process is started again.
As we watched the process for several minutes, I found myself praying, “God, as pain comes into my life and I am pounded down, let me come up looking beautiful, not resisting the process so it has to happen all over again before I come out of the mold looking like Jesus.” I was reminded how my grandfather often called pain or trouble God’s hammer of love, something that shaped us into strong, loving people.
I collect tea cups and one of my favorite ones was a gift from my daughter and son-in-law that they brought home after a summer of living in Romania. They stopped at a pottery store on an excursion to Bucharest and after explaining to the owner that they wanted a special cup and saucer for their mother, he invited them into the back of the store. There he served them tea as he brought out his special cups to show them. They selected a cup he had made by kneading the clay, pounding it into shape, molding it just the way he wanted. He then fired it in a kiln, painted it with bright blue flowers, and fired it again.
I treasure that cup and saucer, even though I continued the pain the clay went through by dropping the cup on the floor and breaking it into a dozen pieces. (I think it’s the only time I cried when I broke something I owned.) I lovingly collected the pieces and glued them back together. It will never hold tea again but it looks beautiful on my shelf. It also serves as a reminded to me that brokenness is not fatal. The purpose of that cup has changed, but it has not been made useless.
As I look at my friends and family I see strength growing in them through the struggles they are going through. Sometimes it takes testing to show ourselves that we are stronger than we think we are, that we do have the capacity to move ahead. I am so proud of them for not wallowing in pain nor letting it steal their joy of living. I would change the poster to read, “Pain is inevitable, Suffering happens, But growth and joy are possible. Choose well.”
Recently I’ve been learning a new way of thinking about relational wisdom from Ken Sande and his team at rw360.org. I highly recommend his work to anyone who wants to have healthier relationships and get upstream of conflict.
Emotions are God’s gift
What about core weariness? How do we deal with the relational difficulties of living with weariness of body or soul? With chronic illness comes chronic weariness. With persistent struggles to do good toward, and with other people who can be very selfish, deceptive and mean comes weariness of soul. With persistent effort to keep a worldview centered on the Lord and to understand a complex and messy world comes weariness of mind. How can I love the Lord with all my, now very tired, body, soul and mind, and how can I love others as weary as I sometimes am of life?
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So where’s joy to be found if today is mixed with soul numbing routine, character testing, and the uncertainty of confusion and conflict? For me, greater joy is not found in the absence of those things, but in recognizing that I have the opportunity to walk with Jesus through them in fellowship with Him.
These comments by Spurgeon seem to turn on its head the notion that the only reason Christ entered our world is to save you and me from suffering and death. Just as Christ created our world and mankind for fellowship with him (with who he is in his heart of hearts), and just as he planned and spoke into being a man and woman whose human nature was fitted to the one he would want to embrace for himself, so now, as we live out our lives on an earthly plane, we live them out as he chose to live it himself (in the only way he could live it given who he is in his basic nature as the Son of God). His plan, or design, for our life preceded the actual execution of the plan in the creation moment. And that plan arose out of who he is personally, and what he could choose to experience himself. There is such Glory that we share in this that it’s hard to put it in words (Psalm 8)!
Yes, as the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:9, Jesus did become poor for our sake that we might become rich. It is proper to draw principles for living from such mercy and grace. But, to draw the greatest joy from that truth, we must come to realize that it was not just for my sake or your sake. Christ’s choice to live among us was clearly also and primarily so for his own sake, or his glory in other words – that he might fulfill the creation purpose he designed into everything (see Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 1:4-12 and Colossians 1:13-24).
Is it too bold of me to say, “I don’t know if He had a cold when He walked this earth, but today, in me, He’s got a whopper!”? That statement seems to resonate with the following scripture passage, and so I’m drinking deeply of the best kind of chicken soup to be had – chicken soup for the soul.
The amazing thing is that it was not Daniel’s good looks, strong body, his quick mind, or his prominence in government that rescued him in, and out of the den of lions. It was God Himself delighting to walk with him, uniting His power and wisdom to the strength of Daniel’s moral convictions. The New Testament book of Hebrews mentions Daniel among people of living, overcoming faith. His life was built upon a solid foundation of trust in the one true and living God walking with him.
God is omnipresent. He is everywhere at the same time, and one of the ways He manifests His omnipresence to us is through our prayers.
God’s forgiveness because of Christ’s death on our behalf “justifies” us forever. We speak of this justification powerfully moving us from the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light, or lovingly moving us from being lost in ourselves to being found and made part of His eternal family, or resurrecting us from being dead spiritually to being living temples of the Holy Spirit. For the believer in Jesus Christ, the Scriptures are quite clear there will never will be any judicial condemnation that can separate us again from God and eternity with Him.
Reconciling “hugs” from our Heavenly Father frees the child of God to thrive in God’s love. Familial forgiveness enables us to enjoy the blessing of a restored fellowship with Him free of any strain (that strain which hid God’s face for a season). The relationship after the forgiving hug from the Lord is the more intimate and deeper kind of a tested relationship that lasts forever.
The story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32 illustrates why and how the believing child of God will always seek the best of relationships with his Heavenly Father. The returning son said humbly, “Father, I have sinned,” but the beauty of the story is in the healing forgiveness and grace flowing from the father’s heart of love for his son. The father’s loving forgiveness restored his son completely and represents exactly what we seek when seeking God’s forgiveness.
Guilt arises because I’ve no moral justification for doing what I did, especially before my holy God who holds every life sacred and is exalted as the ultimate judge over all matters. The remedy is singular. To be free from guilt, I must recognize that ultimately only God can forgive sin, and accept humbly what he has to offer. My friend’s forgiveness does not pardon my guilt, nor will any act of forgiveness toward myself. My only option is to accept God’s forgiveness through Christ.
Love is the answer. The Scriptures teach us that God’s perfect love casts out fear, and over and over again calls us to forgive one another. This is an extreme, radical kind of loving that can heal my guilty soul at the deepest level – where the pool of shame I’m hiding in is deep and dark.