God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting
Post 1: Creative Suffering
“There is no human experience which cannot be put on the anvil of a lively relationship with God, and battered into a meaningful shape.”
Notice what the anvil is—a lively relationship with God. Notice the process—battering. Notice the result—meaning, purpose.
Another individual, this one intimately acquainted with grief, also pictures creative suffering. You may recall Terry Waite. The British hostage released in 1991 after nearly five years of solitary confinement in Lebanon was chained to the wall of his room for almost twenty-four hours a day. Reflecting on his circumstances, he noted:
“I have been determined in captivity, and still am determined, to convert this experience into something that will be useful and good for other people. I think that’s the way to approach suffering. It seems to me that Christianity doesn’t in any way lessen suffering. What it does is enable you to take it, to face it, to work through it and eventually convert it.”
Creative suffering doesn’t simply accept suffering, through the Cross it converts it.
The World’s Way and the Word’s Way
How do we move from suffering to creative suffering? How do we help others to suffer face-to-face with God rather than turning their backs on God during suffering?
We have two basic options.
1. We can turn to the world’s way.
Students of human grief have developed various models that track typical grief responses, such as the typical five stages of death and dying. However, these models fail to assess whether the responses correspond to God’s process for hurting (grieving) and hoping (growing). We will address and assess the typical five stages, however, we want to move beyond them.
2. We can turn to the Word’s way.
The biblical approach to grieving and growing identifies eight scriptural stages in our responses to life’s losses. God’s way equips us to competently, compassionately, and comprehensively sustain and heal sufferers so that they can face suffering face-to-face with God.
Join us again tomorrow as we introduce God’s healing process.
