BitterSweetLife

Pain may make you stronger, but that doesn't necessarily make it weakness leaving the body. I think psychological pain, a realization of loss or suffering, can extract more valuable elements—say, love or trust or repentance.

There is a paradoxical quality to pain. It can have the effect of making us cling all the more tightly to what we already value, so that friends, or family, or Christ, appear increasingly precious. In spite of this, we do not seek pain. It performs a needed work, but we do not welcome the agent. Sometimes I think that pain does the work that no one, nothing else, will.

Disappointment, suffering, sorrow, loss—they conspire to throw us face down before what centers us, the source of our stability. Often, this is God; always, it should be.

I wonder if proven love and trust require a world like ours. The outcomes of painful suffering, however vital, do not often appear to justify the loss. But is it conceivable that sorrow is the means to an end that could not otherwise exist?

I tend to think the world we live in is necessary for love—and ultimately, faith. We experience this bittersweet present state of things because we cannot bring ourselves to trust Christ perfectly in perfect happiness.