Reflections for Lent, April 16, 2014: Suffering
The Breakpoint column today is about suffering. Here is the link.
I cannot write eloquently about suffering. In our modern times, suffering is overused and relative. Yesterday my eyes were hurting me all day and my face was itching because of the helacious pollen in our area; I took a Zyrtec when I got home and took out my contacts, which helped. It didn't used to "suffer" from pollen but with age comes ...... more stuff.
I used the word suffering there, but that was not suffering in a true sense. It was an annoyance and there was an answer. People do suffer in this age, but not here; Syria, the Ukraine, Central Africa.
A colleague just walked into my office to say how amazing a student we have is. She is blind. The other students make excuses about nothing and this student plugs away, boldly, in bad weather and good, swinging her cane, bumping into things gently, moving forward. I held a creative writing reading last night and she was there, reading a poem about her cane, called" Freedom." Quite touching. Does she suffer? Yes, but she wouldn't say so, not like that.
Real suffering means the loss of all things, I think. We see Jesus dying on the cross in our mind's eye and say, Oh, he's dying, look at the blood, what pain. That is true, but I notice that the New Testament writers don't dwell on that. They seem more aware that as the Son of God, a being not like us, he is experiencing on the cross more than physical pain, but separation from God. I always heard that Christ suffered our hell for us and I rejected that, thinking he didn't send time in real Hell. Well, I was wrong. Hell is real separation from the grace and goodness and presence of God because of sin, and Christ did that. We can't enter into that, no matter how much physical pain we might endure--and some people do endure unbelievable physical pain, they really do suffer, not just an itchy face due to pollen.
The cross loses most of its meaning if we don't get who is on it, why, and what internal suffering is going on in addition to the torture
I cannot write eloquently about suffering. In our modern times, suffering is overused and relative. Yesterday my eyes were hurting me all day and my face was itching because of the helacious pollen in our area; I took a Zyrtec when I got home and took out my contacts, which helped. It didn't used to "suffer" from pollen but with age comes ...... more stuff.
I used the word suffering there, but that was not suffering in a true sense. It was an annoyance and there was an answer. People do suffer in this age, but not here; Syria, the Ukraine, Central Africa.
A colleague just walked into my office to say how amazing a student we have is. She is blind. The other students make excuses about nothing and this student plugs away, boldly, in bad weather and good, swinging her cane, bumping into things gently, moving forward. I held a creative writing reading last night and she was there, reading a poem about her cane, called" Freedom." Quite touching. Does she suffer? Yes, but she wouldn't say so, not like that.
Real suffering means the loss of all things, I think. We see Jesus dying on the cross in our mind's eye and say, Oh, he's dying, look at the blood, what pain. That is true, but I notice that the New Testament writers don't dwell on that. They seem more aware that as the Son of God, a being not like us, he is experiencing on the cross more than physical pain, but separation from God. I always heard that Christ suffered our hell for us and I rejected that, thinking he didn't send time in real Hell. Well, I was wrong. Hell is real separation from the grace and goodness and presence of God because of sin, and Christ did that. We can't enter into that, no matter how much physical pain we might endure--and some people do endure unbelievable physical pain, they really do suffer, not just an itchy face due to pollen.
The cross loses most of its meaning if we don't get who is on it, why, and what internal suffering is going on in addition to the torture
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