I am Harboring Love.

Suffering… Never a “delightful” word, never something we have much to say about. Typically the word corresponds with a lot of grumbling, repenting and/or pointing fingers. “Why is this happening to me/him/her?”

On Sunday, Matt preached on what it is like to consider Jesus in our suffering. Whether it be physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual, he explained God isn’t the source of our suffering. (Then why do we so many times base our entire faith upon this belief?)

Suffering comes from 1 of 3 places: My sin or choice, others sins or choices(others free will used against us), and spiritual warfare.

But it was a quote from Frederick Buechner that really pushed deep. Overall, he says in the midst of pain and suffering, you have to press pause on your life and address the suffering— there is an opportunity to receive very intense hope, maturity, and genuineness of faith that doesn’t knock on any other day.

“We are never more alive to life than when it hurts–never more aware both of our own powerlessness to save ourselves and of at least the possibility of a power beyond ourselves to save us and heal us if we can only open ourselves to it. We are never more aware of our need for each other, never more in reach of each other if we can only bring ourselves to reach out and let ourselves be reached….

We are never more in touch with life than when life is painful, never more in touch with hope than we are then, if only the hope of another human presence to be with us and for us.

Being a good steward of your pain involves all those things, I think. It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows.”

Source: Frederick Buechner, The Clown in the Belfry