Suffering As A Shield?

Sufferings can be a shield--they can defend us from the illusions of self-sufficiency and blindness that harden the heart...   -T. Keller, "Prayer" (paraphrased)

It's hard to swallow any concept that suggest that our sufferings may actual be a protective force in our lives. Any modicum of suffering usually sends me into either a cursing or cowering fit. I'd rather yell and scream "Injustice!", or be yellow-bellied, and find a hole to hide in until the discomfort passes.

But perhaps those moments of pain, suffering, and discomfort of any kind--from the deep heart wrenching agony of close, personal loss, to the minor inconveniences we deal with daily--could be protecting us from the greater danger of feeling secure in our own abilities apart from concept of a Fatherly God that loves us and wants what's best for our eternity more than we want for our present.

I just received a new set of prescription glasses this week. The first updated prescriptive glasses I've had in 10 years. The experience has been entirely disorientating. My old prescription felt more comfortable and I knew how to operate with what I perceived to be efficiency. The new prescription glasses are stronger, more accurate to the way the real world actually is, and will be better for me in the long run--in the doctor's prescription I am forced to trust. But in the short term, I'm adjusting to a different perspective of how things really look.

If self-sufficiency (a trust in my own talents, treasures and abilities to secure my long term happiness) is actually the central cause of most of the problems and sufferings in my life--as Jesus suggests--then trying to fight or fix my current circumstances probably won't be of any real, lasting good. Jesus himself, the proclaimed Son of the God of the Universe, didn't try to escape or keep the ultimate suffering of his own wrongful torture and death from befalling on him. He was given multiple opportunities to escape suffering, yet chose to endure the pain of his current circumstances to gain a greater, more lasting good.

In the midst of great pain and suffering, words do little (if any?) soothing. The only soothing that can come is born out of the ability to trust in the promise of something stronger, more powerful, and more reliable than ourselves. Jesus calls us to trust his Father as that stronger, more powerful, more reliable source, as he himself did.