Like so many things in life that we have little or no control over, how we respond to suffering makes all the difference. Suffering reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways. Francois Fenelon’s advice is: Accept suffering as therapeutic to build faith and character.
Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character, hope. Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts (Romans 5:3-5).
Be joyful in hope, patient in suffering, faithful in prayer (Romans 12:12).
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11).
Rumi stated: “Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.” Faith and hope lead us to the conclusion that suffering has value. After all, God only keeps us in this pilgrimage of life to lead us to perfection.
Suffering comes in an infinite number of disguises. Fenelon calls them crosses. Each individual soul must bears its own individual crosses. “We know we must suffer. However, we are always surprised at the suffering as though we believed we neither deserved it nor needed it.” If we stand in pure love, which is completely detached and abandoned from “self”, the soul feeds itself in silence on the suffering and on its union with Christ Jesus crucified, without any reservation to its own pain. It says nothing. It notices nothing. It does the only thing which it has to do – to want nothing even when it lacks all consolation. The suffering can be considered no longer a cross when there is no longer an “I” to suffer there, and to take to self the good things and the bad.
The extreme goodness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering, but a supernatural use for it. (Simone Weil)
God hides His work in the spiritual order as He does in the natural order – under an unnoticeable sequence of events. It is thus that He keeps us in the dimness of faith – that state of faith in which God wants us to live. Thus it is to keep the operation or action of grace (the suffering) in the obscurity of faith that God makes this operation or action slow and painful. He disillusions us with ourselves by the experience of our weakness and our corruption, in an infinite number of failures. Why we revolt is because of our attachment to ourselves, which God wants to destroy. Thus this suffering is painful, but it is our corruption which makes it necessary, and that is the cause of the pain.
We are ready to murmur against God as children are vexed with their parent. But God lets us cry and still saves us! What we weep for would have made us weep eternally. Strange that we cannot endure what is so good for us, and we regret so much that which is so fatal for us! So that is the course of our tears! O my God, please give me a heart which at least fears the eternal torments, and not those which prepare us for Your kingdom.
In our culture we treat pain and suffering as evils to be avoided. After all, pain’s purpose is to alert us to avoid things that could harm us. Don’t run from obedience; don’t compromise; don’t retaliate. Do what is right and let the consequences come, even if they hurt (1 Peter 2:23-24). God knows what happens to you, and God will reward you when you cry out to Him and leave the situation in His hands.
When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to [the Father] who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness (1 Peter 2:23-24).
Great faith is the product of great fights. Great testimonies are the outcome of great tests. Great triumphs can only come out of great trials.
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