Suffering

I don't want this to be centered around my pain, but I can't help but extrapolate and connect the suffering I've been through these past few weeks with what the men and women we minister to also undergo.

Oftentimes, it doesn't make sense.  God, why would you afflict me with something that prevents me from doing the work you called me to?  From attending services at the church you've called me to?  From going to classes to further my understanding of the majors you've called me to?  From even being awake enough to have a loving conversation with someone?

Perhaps the most difficult thing about my condition (unpredictable episodes of intense fatigue and widespread pain, irritability, memory loss, sensitivity to light, etc) is that I have no idea what caused it and no idea how to fix it.  For several weeks, I analyzed every second leading up to the first episode, when I had chest pain that felt like an asthma or heart attack.  But I don't have asthma; I'm an active, 20-year-old vegetarian...  I've had my blood tested for everything.  Nothing.

I've had to conclude one thing: this is the consequence of sin.  I am experiencing more directly than most the decree God rendered against a fallen world. 

 ¹⁸ Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. ¹⁹ For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. ²⁰ Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, ²¹ the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. ²² For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. ²⁴ We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. ²⁵ But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.) --Romans 8:18-25

That's right-- my suffering, your suffering, their suffering is all against our will, all due to God's curse.  And why are we cursed?  Because of how repulsive, horrific, ghastly, disgusting, and revolting sin is!  In God's infinite perfection, their is no room for even a pondering of sin.

And all I can think is, What kind of pitiful creature am I to stand before the infinity of a perfect, holy God, and moan?

Yet, we, as children of God, are not hopeless.  We have that "foretaste of glory."  Every kind of pain and suffering we experience now are the birth pains before God delivers us.  And we will be delivered.  The very goodness that condemns us is the same goodness that guarantees his promise of deliverence.

In such a broken, hurting world, how cruel we would be to hide this hope!  How utterly selfish to hold back what we believe (if we so earnestly believe it) and let those who do not know the Truth writhe in agony!

My prayer now is that every moment of suffering I endure draws me closer to my Savior, the only one who can release us from the very curse he subjected us to, and that I can catch others along the way in my eagerness to hope.

(P.S.  I drew a lot of this from a couple sermons by John Piper.  They are really refreshing for the Easter season: Subjected to Futility in Hope: Part 1.  And don't forget part 2!)