Suffering will make you a better or a bitter person but will not leave you where it found you.
LD
We have a friend who is constantly in pain and suffering from a chronic disease. You can see pain coating his face constantly. Yet, if you ask him ’how he is doing’ the answer is the same. ”Going on
I must say that when I first knew him, I did not know what he meant. Many times I didn’t even know how to handle that response. For often it felt like a cliche and as an automated response, but one thing is sure, that has been and is his response always.
Concluding with praise I have found is his way of not allowing pain to have the last word. Pain has his body but not his identity.
I don’t know how he does it, I can’t explain it to you, but when I look at him and praise is what I remember, it challenges my moaning about life and encourages me to trust God even more.
David finishes his psalms very often in a hopeful note. He could be sick and in pain and suffering ( see verses 4-9) so much that many of his friends think he is going to die, still he praises God ( see verse 13)
I believe that that is the secret to allowing suffering to change us for good, I don’t understand it entirely, but I know it is, I have seen it, I have lived it so many times.
Suffering is going to come, that’s life, but if we choose to keep our eyes on God when we are suffering I know that we will come out on the other sidelooking more and more like Jesus.
( See 1 Peter 5:10, 2 Timothy 3:12, Isaiah 53:3, John 16:33 )