Do you know suffering? I believe we have all suffered. You can not fully live life without a degree of suffering.
In the recent past though I have experienced a new kind of suffering.
Accusations made against me falsely, and injustices from an employer and coworker hurled me down a path I had not yet travelled.
To not be believed in and to be treated in a harsh and irrational manner and to be lied about, is unfamiliar suffering for me and a strange grief.
I do not recognize the emotions that have suddenly taken over my heart.
Rage and revenge are not tools I had considered picking up before. Suddenly I am tempted.
Suffering is not new. The Bible gives great comfort to all suffering...
http://www.openbible.info/topics/suffering
I know most of these verses by heart...and the sermon Jesus taught on the mountain.
Ann Voskamp says ...
The staggering truth is: Suffering is never a meaningless waste of your life, but a meaningful way through your life.
I bake a pie for my friend's family. My friend, I found out, has been admitted to a mental health facility....somebody with five young children at home.
Somehow as I crumble the topping ingredients together, my own suffering is paled.
It is a shadow, not gone but diminished somewhat.
Is there more suffering now? I ask myself....as I think about this book I recently read.
or when one is experiencing suffering are we more acutely aware of it?
Things I ponder while I wrestle out grace and forgiveness.
The only medicine I know that will heal my fragmented heart.
I wait, I wrestle....and somewhere in the grunge of it all...I see the edge of joy.
I named this post transient trials....nothing here is permanent,
not even our troubles....(praise the Lord!)
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.
Romans 8:18
