The Meaning of Suffering

I am a Catholic. [To restate the obvious LOL!].

I believe in the redemptive power of suffering. I believe that in the darkest times of our lives, we experience the most growth and are the closest to God - those are the moments He holds us in His hand and surrounds us with His Grace. Those are the moments that make us in to the people we need to become - if we allow them to.

When we are comfortable, there is no impetus to change - to become MORE, better, closer to God. It is in the pain and the difficulty and the blood and the tears that we reach out for God, that we finally shut our mouths long enough to listen for His voice.

Ask any good parent and they will tell you that the discipline is every bit as important as the love in raising excellent children. You can love a child with your whole soul, but if you do not discipline him, you will raise a monster, regardless of the volume of your love and devotion.

God wants to raise us all up to be *excellent children*. That is His plan for each and every one of us. I recognize this and I value this.

When God sends me the challenges He sends, and sometimes they can be pretty daunting, I should thank Him. Truly - I should thank Him on my knees and Praise His Holy Name, because He is working in me and bringing me around to what HE planned - and I have lived long enough now to know that His plan is the best plan and the only plan worthy of my efforts.

I know this, but do I follow it? Or do I waste the opportunities God provides - instead of accepting suffering, embracing it, and offering it up for the Salvation of the world, too often the suffering finds me cowering, hiding, whining to God "why me God? why me?"

But sometimes I stop long enough to listen in the midst of my railing against the painfulness of it all - sometimes I stop just long enough to hear His voice, and I hear Him whisper...."Because I love you."

Thank you Lord Jesus for the opportunities you give me to grow closer to you, for the effort you put into shaping me in holiness, and most of all - Thank you for never giving up on me, even when I so sorely deserve it.

"Accept whatever befalls you, in crushing misfortune be patient; For in fire gold is tested, and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation." Sirach 2:4-5

"They disciplined us for a short time as seemed right to them, but He does so for our benefit, in order that we may share His holiness. At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it." Hebrews 12:10-11