I woke up with a bad headache today, and it’s still with me. What’s more, my daughter woke up sick. About the only thing I can do that seems to help is to lie beside her so she can rest. So, struggling to function myself, I’m trying to give what I can to someone else who is struggling to function. All the work I had planned to do today is undone. For my part in coping with headache pain while helping someone else, I am tempted to apply for a spot in the hall of martyrs.

As I compare this to the suffering that many people are enduring at this moment, I am ashamed to even mention it. Whether it is sitting alone in a dank jail cell for failure to renounce Christ, or coping with the extreme pain of a life-sapping disease, the suffering of believers is a certainty in this sin-sick world. Some suffering is a result of persecution, some is fallout of the Fall, and some is discipline in perseverance from a loving Father. Dr. William Black does us a great service by outlining the many purposes of tribulation in his article on page 4.

A great temptation for those of us in the relatively filthy-rich West is to insulate ourselves against suffering and pain. We therefore find it a rude awakening when we are touched by its inevitability and get a glimpse of its pervasiveness. C. S. Lewis outlines this well:

“My own experience is something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ.” (The Problem of Pain, MacMillan, 1944)

I so often would resort to a life of no pain and suffering, to gather enough “toys” to convince myself that pain and suffering are far away. At those moments, as Gordon Keddie points out on page 12, heaven seems of little relevance, and my eternal perspective is foggy at best. But I’ve come to the point in my life where I’m realizing the utter stupidity of that selfish perspective. By seeking some temporary bliss I wind up not only with little bliss, but also devoid of the intimacy with the eternal God that will carry me through the suffering marked out for me until I see Him face to face.

As M. Craig Barnes said in When God Interrupts, we will all have to leave everything in this world behind eventually. As we lay down our toys and our friends and family and our expectation of trouble-free lives and endlessly healthy bodies, we actually give up what was never ours to keep, enjoy them for the temporal blessings they are, and we take hold instead of the One who is infinite, faithful, and ever-present, who will carry us through to that day of true bliss.

For those of you who crave more reading on this topic, I’d recommend Surprised By Suffering by R. C. Sproul (Tyndale) and Turn It to Gold by D. James Kennedy (Servant).