I just skimmed the online version of Relevant magazine and found an article by Tim Keller on 5 ways to deal with suffering. From my short short-term memory, here are a couple things:
Don't passively let suffering chip away at you or make you hardened and bitter. Suffering is about refining character. Producing gold. (Yes, I've heard that a lot, but I needed it again and still) I'm trying to remember that gold is desirable, valuable, beautiful and eternal. It's not all about the kiln and fire that feels like it will destroy us. Too easy to focus only on that part. Mostly, though, I was struck by Tim's comment that we have to walk through suffering. Not just sit by or lie down and die. Not race ahead to get it over with. It's a matter of daily making progress in a steady way. It's an actual going somewhere, even if the same long trial feels like being timelessly glued to pain.
For some reason this connects for me with my reading in Joshua 6 this morning. The people of Jericho are paralyzed by fear and fortifying themselves behind walls that will betray and destroy them. The Israelites, on the other hand, are simply walking around these walls. The have visual proof in the Ark of the Covenant that God is walking with them. For the first 6 days of 7 there is nothing else for them to do. It's a steady keeping on which, at that point in the story, looks utterly pointless and unproductive. It's something I want to think more about. Those 6 days of walking around the insurmountable with God at their side.
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