I have had a new thought about Suffering – at least it’s new to me.

It’s more a sense – an understanding – than a thought. It’s like settling into a truth that was always there, but some old clutter from years of collecting trophies desperately needed to be cleared away. Through the dust of things that don’t actually matter, searching for the deeper meaning in pain, this most real reality became clear to me.

Here is the thought, and I know you won’t like it right away: To suffer is to know how loved you are by God.

I don’t think suffering is a product of God’s love. I don’t think God is doling out suffering because, like vegetables, “it’s good for you”. I don’t even think that God likes suffering. In fact, I think suffering breaks his heart. I do think God promises to work through suffering for our good, but that sometimes feels very ethereal, doesn’t it?

My theology tells me that suffering is a result of the reality of sin.

I also know that suffering takes many forms. I used to chastise myself for feeling that anything I experience is suffering compared to the way most of the world lives – without clean water, children being sold into marriage, hungry, war-torn, persecuted . . . those aren’t my realities. But suffering is not objective – it’s subjective. Pain is pain, and comparison has never healed anyone.

So, how can suffering be a realization of love?

I had a seminary professor once ask what the most divine thing about Jesus was. We discussed miracles and teaching and love – all of which humans are capable of with the Spirit of God. Eventually, he looked at all of us and said, “I think the most divine thing about Jesus was that he willingly suffered.”

Willingly suffered. I think some people will choose to suffer for another if they really love them, but Jesus did more than that.

The Bible says that “the Lamb of God was slain before the foundation of the Earth”. So, not only did Jesus come into our reality ready to suffer, he decided to endure suffering before he even created the world that would require his sacrifice.

Why?

There is only one reason that would compel someone to suffer for another – he loves us. God suffers for us because he loves us.

On the night of his last supper, the gospel of John says of Jesus, that “he had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end”. He loved to the end – to the edge of his suffering, the final breath of his own life.

Jesus suffered to demonstrate his love for us. And that love saved us from suffering that had no end.

So that means that Jesus’s suffering can show us we are loved by God, but how does our suffering show us that?

This is the thought I’ve never had before . . .

The book of Hebrews says that Jesus has felt everything we have felt, experienced what we have experienced. So, Jesus knows what my suffering feels like, and he experienced it on purpose.

As I suffer, I know just a small part of the suffering Jesus chose to endure in order to love me. My suffering shows me a sliver of the cost of God’s love.

If Jesus would choose to feel what I feel in my suffering, not to mention the untold suffering of the whole world, as the price for his love – how can I not feel overcome?

The deeper my suffering, the deeper God’s love must go.

To suffer is to have the very best, most clear, visceral picture of how far God would go to love you – how far he has gone.

To suffer is to know how loved you are.  

I still don’t want suffering, but what a gift it is to be so loved.