How Do We Endure Suffering?
Because of sin, suffering is inevitable. No one is exempt. But suffering is not meaningless. God, in his grace, often speaks loudest to us during our suffering. He uses it to make us more like him. He uses it to bring us to greater joy and greater hope. He uses suffering to remind us that the things of this world are broken and will not satisfy. So how do we endure suffering?
Ed Welch writes:
"Take suffering. Add isolation. Now remember that human suffering—when it is apart from Jesus—is a messenger who announces that death will render all of life utterly meaningless. That is abject suffering.
But when someone is resurrected from the dead, and when our lives are bound to his, the interpretation of suffering changes.
We, indeed, suffer. Now add—not isolation—but participation and communion with Christ. In suffering, we come to know him better. Our relationship with him grows. Now add more. It is one thing to have fellowship in our suffering; it is something else for that fellowship to deepen after death. All our suffering is headed toward life, not death. Death does not have the last word. As we are in Christ, we are being irresistibly taken to life."