by Ryan S.
If you want to really live, you must love. If you really love, you will hurt.
This classic quote by C. S. Lewis is worth a fresh look:
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
C. S. Lewis
To really be alive one must accept suffering as a part of life.
To love means to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable will result in hurt.
To shut oneself away from the world of suffering is only possible by being numb or indifferent to the needs around us. Therefore, to fully experience life with all of its amazing zest, one must accept its bitterness.
Is it really better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all?
I believe that it is.
I am merely basing that statement on my own experiences. Losing my daughter (and watching her suffer for 18 years before we lost her) was agonizing at times. Yet, I am so grateful to have known her. I believe that she is still alive and at peace with the Lord. My love for her was more profoundly pure than any earthly love I could have ever imagined having, that is before I had children. However much I thought I loved her before, now that she is gone, I realize even more how deep was the well of that love. There were times in which my shared suffering with Hannah was so intense, I thought my heart would literally cease to function. There were times it hurt so badly that I became numb. I questioned God's goodness. I could foresee a time when all would be made right, but in my mind, it did not justify the present situation. God would help me out of the mire, but the cycle would repeat itself for years, each time encrusting new layers of brokenness with crackled hopes and renewed faith.
What I had not yet learned was that God was deeply changing me throughout the process. It wasn't the kind of change that I could perceive at the time. Looking back, it makes more sense. It makes my love and appreciate for my daughter even deeper and more profound. I am struck with a wonder for which words fail. I cannot discern whether this wonder is for God or for Hannah. But the Scriptures are teaching me something today.
Peter shares something that we can all take to heart. He reminds us that although we will suffer a little while on this earth, glory awaits us:
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:6, 7 ESV).
The original context involves Peter encouraging folks that were serving the Lord in the face of persecution. His emphasis here is on the temporal nature of suffering and the glory and honor that awaits us. It is the faith of the saints that has been refined by suffering that results in praise and glory and honor. If the idea of God praising us seems far-fetched or borderlined blasphemous, it probably should. But that is what the New Testament writers teach us.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul develops this idea in much more detail:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. 8 We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— 10 always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 11 For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So then death is working in us, but life in you....
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. 17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, 18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal (2 Cor. 4:7-12, 16-18 KJV).
What Paul calls a “light affliction” was by no means easy in itself. First century believers faced all the hardships of finances, illness, and social pressures that we face today. They were also beaten, imprisoned, and put to death for their testimony in Christ. Paul is making a contrast here. Although the suffering can be quite intense, in comparison with the unseen reality of eternity that awaits the faithful, it is “light.” It is “but for a moment.”
The result of this suffering of the believer is that it produces something in us called by Paul an "eternal weight of glory." Lewis develops this idea as well as anyone in his essay by that name. Romans 2:29 also points to the idea that God may praise us in some way, but no words more clearly express this idea better than when our Lord Himself used the well-known phrase in the parable of the talents: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant" (Matt. 25:21. 23).
One implication of this is that our suffering does not go unnoticed by God. Another encouraging idea is that glorification is the completion point of salvation in the life of the believer (Rom. 8:30). Our focus should be on pleasing the heavenly Father and seeking His praise. Everything else is secondary, even our love for our children.
This doctrine may be encouraging to our minds and even our spirits, but when our hearts are broken, it may not seem to be enough.
Perhaps the most disturbing suffering on earth today is the suffering of the innocent. Likewise, the suffering of those whom you love can be overwhelming. It can shake our faith. It may even tempt us to box ourselves up in a room somewhere and avoid getting close to people in order to steer clear of pain. Yet, rather than responding in coldness, anger, or rebellion, we should ask God to soften our hearts in order to love as Christ loved.
The theologian, Jürge Moltmann, has stated, “One withdraws into a cell, boxes oneself in, locks oneself up in order not to be exposed to suffering, and passes life by. One really doesn't live anymore but grows stiff in a living body” (The Passion of Life, p. 4). Our society teaches us that we can be happy if we are successful. We need financial security and good health. We need the admiration of other people. However, if we stop short of truly loving and giving of ourselves, we cannot find true fulfillment and our “happiness” is a ruse. Moltmann continues:
We strive for a life without suffering, for joy without pain, for enjoyment without regret, for community without conflict. That is what we call "good fortune." With such good fortune the capable and successful, the people of achievement, are rewarded among us — apparently. I say "apparently" because it is not true; it is rather a public lie…. He who trusts the promises of the gods of work and accomplishment can perhaps attain a life without pain and without conflicts, but he must pay bitterly for it. He becomes an apathetic person, and though still alive, he slowly and surely dies inwardly (p. 5).
The Christian believer must come to terms with a passionate God. God created humans with a free will. It is His passion to interact with his free creatures. He formed a covenant relationship with a group of people that failed him time and again. He never stopped loving them, but His love was coupled with disappointment. The incarnation took this passion to an entirely different level. In Christ, God loved with a perfect human love as He interacted with them in ordinary human ways. He suffered the loss of loved ones. He suffered betrayal. He suffered rejection. He became sin for us and suffered the death of the cross--a death that even included separation from His Father. No doubt, the heavenly Father suffered as well.
Any parent that has a child that is suffering due to an incurable disease knows something about this kind of suffering. A father will willingly suffer by opening his heart up even more for this child. A mother will spend hours loving and caressing a hurting child. In doing so, she also suffers; however, it is a pain that she would rather endure than escape from in order to have the opportunity to love that child even more. All of the suffering that those parents accept is considered a worthwhile trade for the comfort that child receives.
Moltmann journeys deeper when he explores the notion about God suffering with those who are suffering. He talks about God suffering in concentration camps and gas chambers in recent history. The passion of the Christ demonstrates how God willingly chose to participate in the sufferings that sin brings to the human race. Yet, he suffered the cross because of his passion for life. Wounds are healed by wounds. God did not destroy sin by his superior power alone, but by suffering. “By his stripes we are healed.”
If we are going to live in this world as God intends, there will likely be some collateral damage to our own hearts and minds. To serve and love others will result in pain. To be like Christ may mean to suffer at times, but it is a full life. Suffering is only temporary. The glory that awaits us is well worth it. The damage we incure will become something beautiful in God's hands.
Don’t look at suffering as a great evil on which we must spend our most valiant efforts to escape; rather, see suffering as an evil, redeemed in Christ, to aid us in becoming more like Christ. While we look forward to the promise of no more tears, death, and disease, we suffer. In doing so, we participate in a holy rite, with wrung and broken hearts, following in the footsteps of the One who suffered for us all. It is Him we aim to please. We can please God as we love the ones on this earth made in His image--the ones entrusted to our care, the ones in our sphere of influence, the ones that need our love even when they do not have much else.
As a parent, my suffering was secondary, but deep. My heart broke over and over. Her pain was physical, emotional, psychological, and social; it was inextricably intertwined with the pain of both of her mother and I.
It was an honor to suffer with Hannah. Don't get me wrong, I would have removed every bit of it if there had been a medical cure or effective treatment. There wasn't. What she endured was an honor for her too, on a certain level for what God was doing in and through her life and testimony. She had to learn to trust and love us as parents, even when she did not understand or agree with certain necessary medical decisions. In demonstrating love to her, a love that didn't always make sense to her, we modeled God's love. She kept her faith to the end.
Hannah may have been scorned or pitied by people. She may have been misunderstood. But God understood her. He allowed the suffering. Each little trial, every one, God noticed. God was producing something in her that she could not have possibly understood. God was producing in her a level of glory that from our perspective seems impossible. But these things are possible with God. The suffering of our loved ones, especially our children, teaches us that the pain of love is well worth the glory that only suffering can bring.
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