The body is supposed to do its work. God’s work. “We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do” (Ephesians 4:15, from Eugene Peterson’s THE MESSAGE). We take directions from our Head—everything from giving the gospel to giving shelter to the poor wanderer. The directions couldn’t be spelled out more clearly. In some places, God appeals to our philanthropic senses, urging us to “be an instrument for noble purposes” (2 Timothy 2:21). In other places, he has to rap on our desks and repeat it as though we were second-graders: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).
But we hem and haw. This is ironic since so many of us fault him for allowing suffering to be the world’s status quo. (The quo wouldn’t be so status if we got off our duffs and followed his lead). But we shuffle along, so slow to move. Often we are disobedient, listening to pride or prejudice while refusing to do anything. Suffering then breeds and spreads like an insidious virus. It could be held at bay, halted, and eradicated in many instances, but misery foments because most often we do nothing to stop it. His hands and feet fail to alleviate suffering because we have “lost connection with the Head” (Colossians 2:19).
So what does this have to do with Karla and her friends at church?
“God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (1 Corinthians 12:24-26).
The hands and feet of God are strengthened when the body includes someone who is suffering. The nerve endings stand at attention and the adrenaline flows. Muscles are spring-loaded for action. Eyes are focused on the need and ears are attentive to the call. Feet begin moving forward. The body starts working when it goes the extra mile. It becomes united in purpose, “having no division”…and sharing “equal concern for each other.” There’s no time for a church to be splintered into factions when someone in the congregation is suffering.
This is why God knows it is more necessary that Karla remains. She helps the body. It’s happening already. Her Sunday school class is now on the lookout for ways to minister to other people. They are paying the way this summer for others to attend our retreats for families with disabled children.
The Word of God virtually shouts, “Those [who] seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Corinthians 12: 22). This is why Jesus keeps driving home the point about giving special honor to the weak, the poor, and the lame in our fellowship. Heaven knows that without the Karla Larsons in the pews, the Church would be enfeebled. After all, “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith?” (James 2:5).
As the Church exercises its muscles in sacrificial service, it rises to its calling, it steps into the grand purpose for which it was designed. As it does, God smiles. Suffering is being squelched. Pain is being purged. And the darkness that chokes hearts and blinds eyes is being pushed back.
It’s a good, a very good answer to her question, “Why?”
But there are even better reasons.
Eight
THE BEST ANSWER WE HAVE
Once on a tour through the south of England, my friend Judy pointed out an obelisk in the crossroads of a tiny English village. On it were the names of eighteen young men who perished in World War I.
“All of them from this little place?” I asked in disbelief. There were only a handful of cottages, a few shops, a barn or two, and a church. She explained that British army recruiters promised young men that if they signed up together, they could serve together. In the wholesale carnage of World War I, it meant they all died together. Nearly a million Britons were among the nine million slaughtered.
The village was never the same. Shops were draped in black and curtains were drawn. But families clung to one another, the church was filled, parents huddled together, tears were dried, needs were met, grief was eased, and that little town gained a heart and soul more noble, more courageous than the greatest capitals on the continent.
Despite all the horror and heartache, some good came out of it all. Yes, there were sacrifices of praise; yes, principalities and powers looked on in amazement; yes, many suffered for the benefit of others; yes, unbelievers were shamed and their boasting was nullified; yes, people with lesser conflict learned from those on the front lines; yes, the body of Christ in that village grew and built itself up in love.
Corporately, people may have gained. But consider the individual. The British mother who, behind the locked doors of her cottage, wailed privately into her pillow, making it wet with tears and grief. Crying over the loss of not one son, but two. Maybe three. Or a husband.
Wholesale benefits to suffering and how it affects heaven and angels, the church, and the watching world are an unsurpassed reality. But the individual heart requires comfort closer to home, something in tune with the interior of the soul. For suffering is so terribly and horribly personal.
God knows this. That is why, as the grieving mothers and brokenhearted widows in that English village opened their Bibles in search of comfort, they were never assaulted by any passage depicting Jesus laughing uproariously.
They opened their Bibles and found a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief:
During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. (Hebrews 5:7–9)
This is good news for the suffering soul. The Son of God did not exempt himself from affliction but lived through it and learned from it. Once that process was complete, he became the source of help for all who obey him. Should we suffer? “A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master,” says the One who learned obedience from what he suffered. “It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master” (Matthew 10:24-25).
We open our Bibles and find that God has his reasons for allowing suffering, not just in the larger realm, but in the life of the individual. Learning some of those reasons can make all the difference in the world.
THE SCULPTURE
In the English village was a statue, a sculpture of a soldier. As our van crept by, it symbolized for me the bravery of those daring young men on the battlefields of northern France. No less brave are the people who survived World War I, the scourge of influenza in 1918,World War II, the Armenian earthquake, the great monsoons of Bangladesh, and any number of catastrophes in between.
Suffering has inspired and forged more sculptures than one can count. And not just the bronze kind that rest on pedestals in village squares.
Suffering fashions us into a “holy and blameless” image of Christ (Ephesians 1:4), much like a figure sculpted out of marble. An artist in Florence, Italy once asked the great Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo what he saw when he approached a huge block of marble. “I see a beautiful form trapped inside,” he replied, “and it is simply my responsibility to take my mallet and chisel and chip away until the figure is set free.”
The beautiful form, the visible expression of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” is inside Christians like a possibility, a potential. The idea is there, and God uses affliction like a hammer and chisel, chipping and cutting to reveal his image in you. God chooses as his model his Son, Jesus Christ, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Romans 8:29).
What does the sculpture look like? “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed…We always carry around in our body the deat
h of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:7, 8-10). It’s an image of all-surpassing power.
God continues to chisel, chipping more away. “To keep me from becoming conceited…there was given me a thorn in my flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7). God works deeper, carefully fashioning every hidden crevice, even our temperament: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who…made himself nothing…He humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:5-8).
Will this sculpture last the weathering of more storms and trials? “We rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3). It’s an image of rock-solid hope.
God continues to hammer: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word…It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Psalm 119:67, 71). Before my paralysis, my hands reached for a lot of wrong things, and my feet took me into some bad places. After my paralysis, tempting choices were scaled down considerably.
God uses suffering to purge sin from our lives, strengthen our commitment to him, force us to depend on grace, bind us together with other believers, produce discernment, foster sensitivity, discipline our minds, spend our time wisely, stretch our hope, cause us to know Christ better, make us long for truth, lead us to repentance of sin, teach us to give thanks in times of sorrow, increase faith, and strengthen character. It is a beautiful image!
And it’s an image like no other. When Christ is unveiled in me, it’s a unique sculpture. It’s what patience, self-control, endurance, gentleness, kindness, as well as a healthy hatred of sin, looks like on “Joni.” That’s different than the way sensitivity and self-control look on my husband or anyone else. My particular affliction is divinely hand-tailored expressly for me. Nobody has to suffer “transversal spinal lesion at the fourth-fifth cervical” exactly as I did to be conformed to his image.
Yielding to the chisel is “learning obedience from what we suffer.” Our circumstances don’t change; we change. The “who” of who we are is transformed, like a form unfolding, into his likeness with ever-increasing glory. “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:16-18).
I cannot afford to focus on the hammer and chisel. I cannot look around me and bemoan what God is chipping away.
My heart breaks to think of the many people—Christians especially—who live their entire lives this way. They are eaten up by suffering. For years, I was. My wheelchair insisted, whined, and screamed for my undivided attention. Demoralized, I gave in. I allowed my wheelchair to define who I was. All it accomplished was a dry and brittle soul. I didn’t become a bad person, I just lacked passion for life. With no spiritual energy, I spent my days in tired defeat, the day-to-day routine sucking me down. Relief was not sought in prayer or the Bible but in TV sitcoms and weekends at the mall.
Bitter resignation is no better. “Oh, well, this is my lot in life,” we groan. Suffering becomes a predictable environment with familiar, albeit painful, boundaries. But not for long. Capitulating to suffering weakens the soul. Or stirs up anger. I know a sixty-three-year-old man who may soon lose his leg to diabetes. “Well, if it happens,” he huffs, “I’ll just park myself in front of the television. I’ll go to my bedroom and never come out.” This man is fuming about the future—and he hasn’t even lost his leg yet.
Pride is worse. I recall, as a child, crying from a bruised knee and bearing the brunt of my Uncle Henry’s words, “Chin up, you have nothing to cry about. A little hurt always helps!” The words matched his rough-rider image of Teddy Roosevelt with puffed-out chest and clenched smile. I sniffed back tears and promised myself I’d never cry again around my uncle. Others must have felt the same. “Stay out of Uncle Henry’s way,” was the word. Stoicism shrivels the soul.
Believing in suffering is a dead end.
Believing in the Sculptor is living hope.
Turn your focus on him, trusting that he will never cut or gouge too deeply. Are you frightened that God will make it worse? Give you another child with a birth defect? Force you into a nursing home with Alzheimer’s disease? Leave you penniless? God is not a casual or capricious Sculptor. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11). He promises to be precise with the chisel. As Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.”
The hurting and hammering process won’t end until we become completely holy (and there’s no chance of that happening this side of eternity). This is why I accept my paralysis as a chronic condition. When I broke my neck, it wasn’t a jigsaw puzzle I had to solve fast, nor was it a quick jolt to get me back on track. My diving accident was the beginning of a long, arduous process of becoming like Christ. Sure, there are times I wish it were easier: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take [the suffering] away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness/Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:8-9).
I’m not perfect yet. I have a long way to go until my sculpture is polished and complete. God’s grace—the desire and the power to do his will—is enough. “Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but healed” (Hebrews 12:12). Health and wholeness, maturity and completeness will be mine one day!
So when I get bone weary of the process, I remember James 1:2–4, “When all kinds of trials crowd into your lives, my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realize that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed” (PHILLIPS).1
Endurance fully developed. It’s one of the “reasons why” and yet it makes me wince. But please, God, destroy anything in me that you are pleased to carve away. In your hands, what falls away is unimportant. If I am to delight in intimacy with you, I must “be ye holy as you are holy.” It’s needed. Especially since I’m headed for heaven, the holy habitation of holy inhabitants.
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12).
If I love God, suffering does not ultimately matter. Christ in me is what matters. Pain does not cease to be pain, but I can “rejoice in suffering” (Romans 5:5) because the power of God in my life is greater than suffering’s vice-grip can ever be. I want to see the sculpture finished.
When God wants to drill a man, and thrill a man and skill a man,
When God wants to mold a man to play the noblest part,
When He yearns with all His heart to create so great and bold a man
That all the world should be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways:
How He ruthlessly perfects whom He royally elects;
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him into shapes and forms of clay
Which only God can understand,
While man’s tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands;
Yet God bends but never breaks when man’s good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And with mighty power infuses him,
With every act induces him to try His
splendor out,
God knows what He’s about.
Author Unknown
I want “to be for the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:12). I want to be conformed to bis image. The Sculptor desires it too, for “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
All these are reasons behind our suffering. They answer in part the question “Why?”
But only in part.
Somewhere after my first decade in my wheelchair, I was gratified by what I was beginning to see. I was thankful for what I was learning. The image of Christ was slowly emerging as I reflected his kindness and compassion, as well as a sensitivity to evil. I marked that first decade as a milestone, a passage. I sensed that God wanted to show me more, lead me on, raise me higher, “refine the sculpture,” as it were. To “leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity” (Hebrews 6:1). I glanced in my rearview mirror and made a checklist:
All things are working together for my good. For God’s glory. Doesn’t mean being a best-selling author or speaker. Simply means being like Christ. Check.
Hardships have forced me to make decisions about God. Made muscular my faith. I can believe in him more now than before the wheelchair. Check.
Suffering has done a job on my character. Not so sloppy about relationships. Stick to promises. Am more patient, at least somewhat. People matter more. Check.
Being paralyzed has really made heaven come alive. Not in a cop-out way, but in a way that makes me want to live better here because more is coining there. Check.
No doubt about it. My thoughts have been jerked right side up. Can’t reach for the common temptations most people do. Having no hands helps with that. Check.
Suffering has made me a little more sensitive to others who are hurting. Couldn’t have cared less about quads like me before my accident. Different story now. Check.
When God Weeps Page 12
