Prodigal: Sometimes I just don’t want to suffer.
Me: Yes, but that is how we become more like Christ.
Prodigal: That makes me love Christ even more.
This is from the book The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
The death of Jesus was qualitatively different from any other death. The physical pain was nothing compared to the spiritual experience of cosmic abandonment. Christianity alone among the world religions claims that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ and therefore, and imprisonment. On the cross he went beyond even the worst torture, and imprisonment. On the cross he went human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours. In his death, God suffers in love, identifying with the abandoned and godforsaken. Why did he do it? The Bible says that Jesus came on a rescue mission for creation. He had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without ending us.
My covenant will I not break, nor later the thing that is gone out of my lips
Psalm 89:34
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
2 Responses to Suffering