Sometimes life asks the impossible of us: like packing up and moving from a place where you have lived for many decades of your life; emigrating; losing a life partner to an early death, a loved one to suicide.
Sometimes, as in the case of a very dear friend of mine, it asks that you accompany your eighteen year old son through the dark valleys of chemotherapy and radiation in a fight against cancer; or it asks that you be that young man fighting this battle.
It is hard to stand at the edge of such a situation and to not really know how to help. We always feel that we should somehow make it better. We somehow feel that the difficult things should be put behind us as soon as possible, or be avoided at all costs. We feel that the situations life puts us in and where we suffer pain or hardship = wrong or even evil. We pray for deliverance, for healing, for the miracle that will make everything better.
But all around us life is happening and it is messy. It is mostly hard. We were taught that it is because of sin that this life is doomed to suffering. Jesus, whom we were taught to be sinless, had a difficult life and a horrendous death. We were taught that He came to break the bondages of sin. But since, nothing has changed in the condition of the world, or in the lives of believers. Hardship visits all of us, whatever our belief systems are. In the Christian tradition, it seems we have equalled sin to suffering.
What if this is not so? If freedom from sin doesn't keep us from suffering, then it of course concludes that the two cannot be equal. Somehow we have to come to some understanding about suffering other than that it is born of evil and should therefore be eradicated through prayer and faith. Grace has to be found in the midst of suffering. Not necessarily the grace that heals the illness, or miraculously brings relief, although that could certainly be the case. But GOD has to be found there, especially and radically, in the eye of the storm. Also, not in some super natural way, but in the nitty-gritty of things. In the shared tears, the loving care of others, the taste of things, the colors of a sunset, the cool breeze or soft touch on fevered skin. There has to be small moments of deep connection in the midst of the struggle. The insight into what really matters. The deep appreciation of the more that lies under the surface of life as we think we know it, which somehow opens up to us when go through the dark valleys of suffering.
This said, I don't mean to make light of suffering or to the other extreme glorify it as something to seek for the sake of earning merit. I'm also not implying that praying for deliverance is wrong. Suffering remains suffering and prayer is our means of conversing with God about that. In this regard I want to refer to a previous post by George: Put into my heart the right questions
This afternoon it started to rain while the sun was shining unbearably hot from the summer sky. It seems impossible that rain clouds and sunshine can inhabit one piece of sky at the very same time. I took a picture of this strange phenomenon. It seemed to be saying something. That nothing is impossible? Yes, maybe. Not even the idea that suffering and darkness and pain have their own unique gifts, which incredibly, can rain from the very same sky.
Matilda
P.S. A writer we much respect, Carl Mc'Colman, writes on this same subject in his blog post: A kiss from Mom and a lesson in suffering.
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