Benefits of Suffering
“But may the God of all grace,
who called us to His eternal
glory by Christ Jesus, after you
have suffered a while, perfect,
establish, strengthen, and
settle you.” (1 Peter 5: 10)
Suffering did not enter our lives
because God wanted it but
because He allowed it. When
Adam and Eve disobeyed
their Creator, they lost the
Source of Life, leaving behind
the painless state that existed for their steadfast faith and
beliefs in the Lord Christ. God
allows us to participate in His
suffering, so, we should give
thanks to Him. If we have a
physical pain, we remember
that the Lord Jesus suffered
pain under the heavy burden of
the cross.
We share in our Lord Jesus
great love by bearing the pain.
We need to wait and be patient
when we suffer. We need to aware of our corruptibility and
thus to know where our human
limits lie. Pain helps us to
review where we are heading in
our lives and to bring us back to
the proper center, which is the
Lord God. The church fathers
use the analogy of relating our
suffering to metallurgy. For
instance, the goldsmith would
take a piece of unrefined gold
and put it through an intense
in God’s kingdom. They
found themselves in a state
dominated by pain, tribulations,
and suffering. Then, our Lord
God and Savior Jesus Christ
came as a man and saved us
all on the Holy Cross. Since He
is our Father, we are to carry
the cross.
The cross is the greatest
glory of our beautiful Coptic
Church. We should take pride
in the persecution and suffering
that we face in our everyday
lives. Our forefathers suffered
severe persecution and death train ourselves now to fixing
our eyes on the One who
agreed to grant us the eternal
life doing whatever it took to
do so. Carrying the cross is
a very good opportunity to
share in Jesus' suffering and
crucifixion. It is very easy to
pray, to meditate, and to praise
God which are important and
necessary in Christianity, but to
take and accept the pain that
He allows is a higher level of
love and trust in the Almighty.
All kinds of pain that the Lord
allows help us to become fire and hammer it. This all
causes stress on the gold but
after the whole process the
gold becomes pure. We are
that piece of gold and the Lord
is that goldsmith. The Lord
allows the pain in our life so
that we may grow closer to Him
and become true Christians.
May the Lord Jesus who was
crucified for us help us all to
carry the cross thankfully so
that we may be worthy of His
eternal kingdom. Amen
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