Skip to main content

Suffering

Suffering. I hate it. Who doesn't? I'd like to hate it through and through, but I can't because it does come with benefits. Knowing that makes it easier to accept it in my own life and in the lives of those I love.

I'm currently reading, Andrew Murray's The Master's Indwelling. It's not one of my favorites, but he has a number of potent passages. In the chapter I read this morning, on being crucified with Christ, he says:
"What are the marks of a crucified man?...humility...impotence, helplessness. When a man hangs on the cross, he is utterly helpless, he can do nothing. As long as we Christians are strong and can work or struggle, we do not enter the blessed life of Christ, but when a man says, 'I am a crucified man, I am utterly helpless, every breath of life and strength must come from...Jesus, then we learn what it is to sink into our own impotence and say, 'I am nothing....When a man goes down to the grave...it means this: that he cries out, 'I have nothing but God...if you want to live the life of heaven, there must be death."

I've been there before - in that place of utter helplessness where my spirit lay in the dust, unable to move, unable to pull itself up, feeling dead, lifeless, and hopeless (more than once to be honest). My guess is that you have too, and if you haven't, you will. I'm a different person than I had been before those seasons of my life. My faith is stronger. Deeper. More sure. Looking back, I can honestly say I'm grateful - not for the pain and suffering itself, but for the faith, the trust, the assurance that it worked in me. Don't get me wrong, I can't say I'm clambering down the diving board to hurl headlong into a sea of troubles, but because I want to "live the life of heaven, (I know) there must be death," and while I don't think I'll ever enjoy suffering, I want to embrace it the way my Savior did "for the joy set before (me)." 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

As A Child

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3 Become like little children? Really? Children are definitely cute and innocent, but that pretty much covers the positive qualities. On the negative side, however, the list is quite a bit lengthier: demanding, dependent, self-centered, messy, often smelly, expensive, and embarrassingly honest. So why? WHY in the world would Jesus tell us to become like little children? WHY in the world would He want that? What was He thinking?! Well, He was a thirty-something year-old bachelor. Maybe He didn't really know what He was talking about when He said that. I mean, if we come to Him like little children, it's pretty much guaranteed to be messy. We're likely to be crabby, cranky. We might be downright angry. Prayer-ADD is hard to control on a good day. If we're not on top of it, if we don't have our list in front of us to focus our thoughts, we...
4 comments
Read more

The Hug That Said It All

I witnessed a hug the other day. Big deal, right? People see other people hug all the time. Yeah, but this was a hug that melted my heart. We attended a graduation party in honor of our nephew. It was held under a pavilion. There was quite a spread of food, and each table was loaded with decorations and favors (very nicely done, Ange!). Obviously a lot of work . . . a lot of love was poured into this party. As the evening wound down, many of us hung around to help clean up. That's the un-fun part of a party. The un-fun part of this party became even more un-fun when, in an attempt to dump a drum of trash into a plastic trash bag, wet, gooey, smelley garbage ended up on the concrete floor of the pavilion. It was rank and disgusting, but my sister-in-law (the afore mentioned "Ange.") cleaned up without complaint. When the graduate meandered by shortly thereafter, I jokingly told him, in a scolding voice, that he had better get down on his knees in gratitude for all his moth...
3 comments
Read more

More Than Enough

Life is teeming with reminders of our need for God. Take today for example: I'm exhausted. I have this ridiculously sensitive body rhythm, and I messed it up yesterday. I went to St. Louis with a mother and daughter. The daughter is strongly considering an extended stay in Burkina Faso as a missionary. So the mother/daughter team that have been there/done that spent the day with the mother/daughter team in the early stages of going there/doing that. It was a great time. Ami and I both enjoyed sharing our experiences, and by their own admission, the time was profitable for the other mother and daughter; but for me, to talk for a full eight hours is waaaayyy past my conversation limit. "Conversation limit?" Yep. Conversation limit. A previous boss used to cite some statistic about how many words an average woman speaks each day as compared to the average man. He'd see me talking and joke that I hadn't reached my quota for the day. My quota, however, is much lower ...
2 comments
Read more