By Isabel Vorst | Intern
Suffering is something people aim to avoid at all costs, seeking the easy, comfortable life instead. However, suffering can be a beautiful and purifying thing, unveiling our desire for something deeper and drawing us into a beautiful intimacy with Christ.
Often, it is not until we are confronted by something deeply traumatic or painful that we are forced to consider the cold reality of this fallen world and reorder our values. Are we living a life that we will be content with when we pass? Are our pursuits worthwhile or merely empty?
Grappling with suffering unveils our desire for something deeper. It purges our hearts, cutting deep to the core of our longing: for a more perfect world, for truth and for the meaning of why we live, ache and die. When we face suffering, we are torn from the distractions that consume us — temporal worries of work, school, relationships, possessions and responsibilities.
Suffering can be extremely isolating. Often, it is impossible to convey the pain in our bodies or hearts to others, let alone understand and provide the love and comfort we ache for. A gaping wound remains in our souls, and that becomes painfully lonely. There is no one we can turn to who will truly understand.
Yet, to suffer is one of the deepest forms of communion with Christ. The isolating nature of it forces us to cry out to the only one who does understand — who has borne pain beyond measure on the cross and knows the deepest, inarticulate yearnings of our heart — and to close our eyes as he wraps us in the comfort of his tender embrace.
To suffer in the arms of Christ is a gift that the pleasantries of the world do not give us. It is an intimacy that a painless life does not often let us find.
The illusion of comfort the world force-feeds us is deceptive — if we are satisfied with endlessly chasing material for a promise of an easy, fulfilling life, we are pulled away from the agony that is so integral to Christ’s sacrifice. But when we embrace our pain and lift our eyes above, we are met with the most tender form of intimacy.
Luke 24:26 says, “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?”
Suffering is an opportunity to participate in the beauty of the cross — to enter into the glory of God as we partake in the smallest portion of the pain that our King bore to save us.
To experience such pain is to more intimately behold our crucified God, and to be sanctified. As God’s creation, we bear his image, and when we suffer, we bear the image of our suffering Savior.
When the things we have learned to depend on and care for most are wrenched away, it feels like we are dying. But when we experience immense hardship, we learn to surrender these things and discover we are more alive in him than we are in ourselves. Though our flesh fails us, our spirit remains victorious in Christ.
As we suffer, we see him more clearly. We see his pain through the intimate lens of our own and are flooded with love for what he did for us on the cross. We can more closely behold the heart-wrenchingly beautiful scene of our perfect savior, marred beyond any man, hanging on the cross and drawing the lost into his open arms.
To suffer well is to walk with Christ through the shadow of the valley of death, for he promises to be with us.
Psalm 56:8 says he collects our tears and keeps count of our sorrows. Why? Because he cares for us more than we can know.
Every person living in this fallen world will experience suffering, and it is up to us how to respond. When we choose to embrace suffering, we can see how it refines and conforms us to the image of Christ, making the pain of this world not only bearable but beautiful.
Isaiah 49:16 says he has written our names on his hands, and someday I know those gentle, nail-scarred hands will grasp mine, and I will be glad for each and every pain that drew me closer to my Savior.
