Suffering’s Purpose, Resiliency’s Hope

If something bad has happened to you,
And you have no way of holding true,
Go to God while you’ve still got time,
The Lord God Almighty will give you a new way to climb.
Suffering is ingenious; it’s the way to new life,
Suffering teaches us how to deal with our strife,
In our suffering we wonder just how we’ll cope,
Yet strangely suffering takes us through resilience to hope.

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Suffering is the worst of opportunities toward the best of outcomes.

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Suffering is no guarantee of survival, but it is one step closer to a stronger version of us that will withstand the heinous vagaries of life that threaten as squalls in the future.

There is another vital step we must take, however, having been placed into a cauldron of cruel circumstance – to respond well, which is to see God’s grace as it is in everything. Such a response causes us to be broadly grateful and thankful, even though one life has ended and new life (perhaps one we don’t want) has begun.

If suffering is to be converted from the worst of opportunities into the best of outcomes, these two conditions are present:

1.      We are real about the circumstance, which, on the one hand, means we must complain as part of the process, but, on the other hand, we must also search God and surrender it all, routinely, before him.

2.      We resist going into ourselves, to deny the truth, or to rally against the truth. We respond the right way – which the world knows nothing about – so we can expect confusion in our friends and family; they may not understand that submitting before God is the answer we long need.

It’s a grand and polarising paradox that the only way through to healing and growth is an acceptance that seems too meek to the world.

But power comes on us when we listen to the still and small voice of the Holy Spirit as he gently helps us through massive situations of inner conflict.

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Suffering is ingenious. Pain, if we can accept it and embrace it, can be the most direct route into gain. Our faith will reveal us to this fact.

And who would have thought that something as bad as suffering would be central to plans for a good future, custom designed by the Lord God, himself.

God does not inflict suffering on us, yet he allows it because he has already made a healing path through it. We must trust and obey.

© 2015 S. J. Wickham.