The Gift of Suffering

 “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24)   In this verse Jesus reveals a profound truth: God’s pattern of bringing his kingdom to our fallen world by means of suffering and death. Out of death comes life. There is a higher purpose in suffering. We know that Jesus spoke this about himself, his own sufferings, his own death, which brought forth resurrection and life for himself and for others. A few verses later, he added, “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” Jesus was that kernel of wheat whose death brought eternal life and also brought about glory for his Father. Death was the purpose of his life. Life was the purpose of his death. But Jesus’ statement was also about us. If we read on in that same passage, Jesus applied this princi...

  “Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you.” (Psalm 55:22)   What do you do after God gives you something? You give it back. This is true even for our sufferings. (Insight #3).   In her book Suffering is Never for Nothing , Elizabeth Elliot makes two observations based on the verse Psalm 55:22, quoted above. She wrote, “To my amazement and delight I discovered that burden in the Hebrew is the same word as the word for gift . This is a transforming truth. If I thank God for this very thing which is killing me, I can begin dimly and faintly to see it as a gift. I can realize that it is through this very thing which is so far from being what I would have chosen, that God wants to teach me His way of salvation.”   Upon reading that the word burden also means gift, my wife Jean started to cry. It was not hard for her to think of her cancer as a burden, but to simultaneously think of it as a gift—that was not an easy idea. Cancer was not a gift she woul...