It's 3:00 AM. And I'm writhing in pain in our hotel bathroom, trying not to wake up Sara and the girls. 12 hours later, and after many painkillers, the pain has become unbearable. Next stop: the emergency room.
I'm shuttled from one room to another, shivering the entire time, vomiting as I go. Relentless pain. Powerlessness. Eventually, surrender. This was not how I planned my family's Spring Break to go.
A cheap version of Christianity sold in many religious marketplaces is that Jesus died so that you don't have to suffer anymore. Suffering, for some religion peddlers, is a result of a lack of faith. But you couldn't say that to the first disciples, to Paul, to Stephen, to Peter. Suffering was the witness of the early church. Early Christians viewed their vocation as bearing the sufferings of a broken world, and demonstrating redemption in the dark places – in and through suffering. Suffering was viewed as a way of knowing Jesus more fully, and becoming the kind of person who lives a transformed life in a corrupt world.
The sufferings we experience are viewed as holy reminders of our utter need for God. Paul uses the analogy of labor pains, saying
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom. 8:19-23)
This experience blew up my sense of control. Here, I was not a writer, a therapist, a pastor, a father. I was simply a 'patient', Latin for "one who suffers." Stripped of control, I could rest only in my deeper identity – as one who is most myself when powerless, weak, surrendered, and therefore wholly dependent on Jesus.
Interestingly, we've been preaching on Resurrection, but also continue to talk about suffering, about how God is near to us in our pain. Why? Isn't Resurrection supposed to be happy and pain-free? The reality is that our suffering drives us to dependence. It drives us to wrestle with God. It drives us to surrender control. Ironically, suffering drives us to become a transformed people, a Resurrection people. You can't have Resurrection without suffering.
That's the pattern after all, right? That's what you know through your own sufferings, right? You've met people who have suffered but have not been transformed through that suffering, I'm sure. Instead of transforming their pain, they transmit it. They are often bitter, cynical, angry, and looking for someone to blame. But those who have met Jesus in their sufferings know an intimacy with God that has become transformative. As I often tell people, God transforms you in the furnace. Transformation cannot be microwaved.
After my emergency surgery to remove a gallbladder full of stones, I stayed in the hospital for four days. Then, on the last day before our late flight, I sat poolside, still in pain, but viewing this paradise from a whole new perspective. And I heard a faint whisper of Resurrection: I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philip. 3:10-11)
Resurrection power. It's available to each of us, but not the way we think. It's a power that thrives on our weakness. And it is fueled not by cynicism and anger, but by gratitude. I'm learning this Resurrection power the hard way, because I'm not prone to give up control on my own. But thanks to a providential experience in Cabo, of all places, I'm a bit more ready to live a more surrendered, transformed life.