SUFFERING


Greetings to you all in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!

Oxford Dictionary describes the word, ‘Suffering’ as “physical or mental pain that a person or animal is feeling”.

According to our understanding, suffering is the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.

Through this article, we are going to examine ourselves!

When I reached out to write about this topic, suffering. There were these two things that came to my mind;

As a Human beings, we all are experiencing suffering, but the main point is that. Is our suffering really, Meaningful? Or is it Meaningless?

Meaningful Suffering

In the word itself, we can identify what is meaningful suffering. Life shouts, survival of the fittest. For this survival, we need to work. Sometimes the work is perhaps easy or taught, but still, we need to work on it to pursue the thing.

e.g. The athlete always practices, meanwhile, during the practice time he/she perhaps gets some injuries and struggles, but his/her Moto is about to win. Because of this goal the suffering can’t stop him/her to achieve the destination.

In the same way, is our suffering really worth it to achieve our goal? or destination we have to face many sufferings and hardships, but at the end of this suffering, we will really taste victory. The victory balances our suffering.

This kind of suffering is really blessed and meaningful for achieving our destination and the destination makes us proud. This is what real Meaningful suffering.

Meaningless suffering

Meaningless Suffering is all about suffering that doesn't have any meaning.

e.g. If we see a drug addict fellow, he/she claims that they want to enjoy their life and want to be happy forever. For that happiness, they are choosing these drugs. Some people, they claim that this drug/addiction gives them pleasure so that they can forget all the pains. But the end of this destination gives them meaningless suffering of death or health issues.

This kind of meaningless suffering is a total waste of time and money. End of this we gain nothing from it.

In Bible we can see all the characters in the Bible, they have gone through struggle and suffering but end they are witnessing for God.

The best example we all know in the Bible is 'Job'. In his life, God was allowed to face the struggles to the extent, but God never left him because,

Even though Job lost everything in his life; but still he never cursed God for any moment. He has hope in God and we can see Job 1:22 says

'In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong doing'.

Sometimes in our lives, we all go through some dark side that moment some questions has arisen in our minds

"Where is God when…

  • Innocent children die of preventable diseases?
  • Terrorists carry out their senseless suicide missions?
  • Millions live in poverty?
  • People wage wars and commit atrocious crimes in the name of religion?
  • My loved one dies of cancer?
  • I lost my job?

We hunt for answers and we demand explanations.

If we can’t find satisfactory answers when evil and suffering happen, we come up with some answers of our own. We think God must not be there at all.

In Job 42:10

And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends, and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.

So Jesus calls us to serve him; perhaps on the journey we may have struggles and sufferings, but we should keep in mind that, the will be a way to success and happiness

In Luke 9:23-24

Then Jesus said to them all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.

If a stone wants to be a sculpture, it must give up everything it has and agree to carve itself according to the voice of the maker of the sculpture; only then will the formless stone takes on a shape and becomes an object that can be seen and admired by many while enduring all the pain that may befall it at any moment.  It becomes a great sculpture Just like in our lives sometimes we are carved in the midst of those difficulties and sufferings, but just remember one thing in this way all these pains sculpt us and make us useful objects for others and ourselves.

So try, learn to see yourself from the dark side so that you can enjoy the brightness.

Thank you

Article by A. Mathew Kirubakaran. 

 

 

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