Pastor's Corner
June 17, 2018
We would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord.Therefore, we aspire to please him,
whether we are at home or away. 2 Cor 5:8b-9
Suffering and death are a part of life that we don’t talk much about. We complain about suffering, we deny the reality of death, but that is to our detriment. St. Paul didn’t complain about his many trials; instead, he yearned to please God in all that he did, so that God might be the center of his life.
God is the source of our life, He sustains our life, and our life is His. One of the tasks of our life is to learn to celebrate that God is Who He is, and that His will is always the most loving and most perfect for us. That includes recognizing that we are nothing without him. The experiences of aging, being sick and dying help us accept God as God.
There are many ways we can suffer, but all of them are connected to the process of becoming detached from the created goods that surround us. Conversion to Christ involves suffering because God begins to replace other goods at the center of our hearts. We have to deny ourselves things that once gave us pleasure. This involves suffering. Sometimes things or people are taken from us, which causes suffering but also gives us an opportunity to focus more on our relationship with God. And as God becomes the focus of our life, things that once attracted us become less important.
Suffering is a part of conversion, which is a kind of death. “whoever loses his life for my sake will save it,” Jesus said (Luke 9:24). Jesus sweated blood in Gethsemane because He loved life. The more intensely we love life, or our loved one, the more intense our suffering as life draws to a close, but the more perfect the love we express in our surrender to God and His Will for us. When our death is imminent, we need to remember that in dying in Christ, God’s love has brought to the entrance into the fullness of His love which began at our conversion.