A Catholic Nun, Phillip Yancey and My Pain

We recently discussed on a Sunday morning how our loving, sovereign Father uses pain in our lives. We talked about the fact that pain is inevitable but that it doesn’t have to just hurt. As believers, we want our lives to matter for something eternal and one way we can do that is to pursue ministry where we can help and love others out of the grace that the Lord has given us to deal with our pain.

While reading about this, I ran across a list of advantages to being poor that was first written by Monica Hellwig, a Catholic nun. Phillip Yancey retooled this list to include all who suffer. As you are in pain, as you struggle to reconcile God’s love and your present condition, think and pray through these things and let’s seek to echo Paul: “I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

1. Suffering, the great equalizer, brings us to a point where we may realize our urgent need for redemption.
2. Those who suffer know not only their dependence on God and on healthy people but also their interdependence with one another.
3. Those who suffer rest their security not on things, which often cannot be enjoyed and may soon be taken away, but rather on people.
4. Those who suffer have no exaggerated sense of their own importance, and no exaggerated need of privacy. Suffering humbles the proud.
5. Those who suffer expect little from competition and much from cooperation.
6. Suffering helps us distinguish between necessities and luxuries.
7. Suffering teaches patience, often a kind of dogged patience born of acknowledged dependence.
8. Suffering teaches the difference between valid fears and exaggerated fears.
9. To suffering people, the Gospel sounds like good news and not like a threat or scolding. It offers hope and comfort.
10. Those who suffer can respond to the call of the Gospel with a certain abandonment and uncomplicated totality because they have so little to lose and are ready for anything.

God bless our suffering and our pain and cause us to be disenfranchised with this world and drawn more dearly to his will and providence.