Monday, July 9, 2012

The water keeps on falling

I am currently reading C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain.  It has catalyzed much thinking... about life, about suffering, about purpose.

Mr. Lewis writes, “We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character ... Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”

When we face suffering, it is painful so we desire it to stop. But it is through our suffering that so much beauty takes place.  In life's difficulty, in the midst of the challenges and the frustration and the heartache, God is lavishing you with the deepest love.  He is molding you into the person He created you to be.

"But those who suffer he delivers in their suffering;
he speaks to them in their affliction."
- Job 36:15

"My comfort in my suffering is this:
Your promise preserves my life."
- Psalm 119:50

This is real life.
It is beautiful and it hurts.
I pray that the beauty would obscure the pain.

1 comment:

  1. "This is real life.
    It is beautiful and it hurts.
    I pray that the beauty would obscure the pain."

    Beautifully stated.

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