Suffering - a means

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I’m reading my old journals. And I am looking at my notes for Restless [a study guide by Jenny

Allen], precisely the session on suffering. Coincidentally I am also listening to Jeff Cavins, “When you suffer – Biblical keys to hope and understanding”. Cavins gives a verse - Colossians 1; I rejoice in my suffering for you sake, and I fill up in my body, that which is lacking in the suffering of Christ. And also quotes from Pope John Paul II’s February 11,1984 Salvifici Doloris [salvific meaning of suffering], paraphrasing paragraph 27 – What is lacking in the suffering of Christ. Nothing, but that you can come to know the love of God. He has made room in His suffering for you to participate. The springs of divine power gush forth precisely in the midst of human weakness. Those who share in the sufferings of Christ preserve in their own sufferings a very special particle of the infinite treasure of the world’s redemption and can share it with others.

In the suffering of Christ – He has given me a particle, given me room to participated; given me an opportunity to pick up my cross and follow him, live like he did, love like he loves.

What does it mean? I have suffered. I am currently suffering. I am going to suffer. It is a foregone conclusion. Suffering in big and small ways. No case, as a friend says. No case.

The big question is – why do I suffer?

Saint Paul [2 Corinthians 12:7-8], “...to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.”

The purpose of Pauls suffering is to keep him from conceit - smug, arrogant, vain, prideful, full of self importance and satisfaction. While I am conceited, Paul was ahead of me because He has already found God, or did God find him? Anyway – they were tight. I know the purpose of my suffering has been to get me to seek God, to look for that tightness with Him. Without my suffering, I would not have sought God. I know this because I know myself.

But there is more to it than just that – because it is not about me. It is not just about my salvation - because I was saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved. It is more than that – it is what I do with my suffering, what I give into it, go throw it, draw from it, and finally confer from it.

Another question - how will I suffer?

2 Corinthians 12:9-10; But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”. Therefore I will boast of my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

So – while my suffering serves me and those around me a purpose, I really cannot yet rise to joyfulness and glee-ing in it. I can say thank you – which I think is acceptance and often obedience based – but I am still a ways to go before I get to rejoicing in it. At that point I guess I’ll be singing odes to myself and – wait, will I get conceited? Haha - I can see Paul’s dilemma already.

Does it end?

No! I don’t think it ever does – horror!. But He will provide. Because, “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youth grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength” [Isaiah 40:29-31].

What am I going to do?

Understand. Definitely not the “why” sometimes, because there are moments it makes no sense at all, but the “who”. Lord God Almighty.

Hope. Because without that - then it’s a dead end innit? With no destination.

Suffering. An means to an end – or better still, to eternity.

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