Suffering 2: Suffering Forms Endurance

Last week, we started with a question: What does God do with suffering when He does not remove it?

We argued that one thing suffering can do is expose our illusion of control. Peaceful periods of our lives give us an illusion that our future is predictable. But suffering has a way of showing us where our control ends. In such moments of chaos, God sustains us with His continual presence, which is why David said, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, because you are with me. That is where we left off last week. 

Today, I want to explore with you another question: What happens when losing control is not temporary?

It is one thing to reach a moment when we realize, I cannot fix this. But what happens when we wake up the next morning, and nothing has changed? What happens when you have done everything you know to do, asked God for help, waited for something to change, and still nothing happens?

I think this may be harder than learning that we have no control over situations. 

Because when something first goes wrong, there is usually still hope that it will be fixed quickly. We pray for the outcome to change. And sometimes it does. But other times, it does not and stays that way for a long time. 

Some people say, “Maybe this is not God’s will. Move on.” Others say, “If you only had enough faith.” But honestly, I think many of us live somewhere in between.

There is just enough hope to keep us from giving up, but also so much silence that we do not know what God is doing. Time keeps moving, but the situation does not. And after a while, we begin to wonder what we are supposed to do with that kind of waiting.

What does that kind of waiting actually do to us? Does it make us trust God more, or does it slowly wear that trust down? How long can hope and silence live together before we begin to question what we believed in the first place? And when nothing seems to be changing, what does it even mean to endure?

That is the question I want us to wrestle with today.

What can suffering do to us when it cannot yet be removed?

Paul says in Romans 5: 1

Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. 2 Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory. 3 We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. 5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

I find these words both hopeful and difficult. Paul says that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. But is that really what suffering always does? We have all seen suffering make people stronger. But we have also seen it make people tired, bitter, afraid, or simply worn down.

So what is Paul talking about? How does suffering become endurance rather than exhaustion? How does endurance become character rather than resentment? And what happens to faith during all that waiting?

Maybe the story of Joseph can answer this question. Most of us know his story well. Jacob loved him more than the other children and made him a colorful robe. Joseph got two dreams in which he was shown to be greater than his brothers and even his father. This upset his brothers. His brothers sold him into slavery. He ends up in Egypt as a slave, rises in rank, but then ends up again in prison, then interprets Pharaoh’s dream, and then becomes the second in command of all of Egypt. This put Joseph in a position to save his family from the terrible famine. 

When we tell the story that way, it moves rather quickly. But Joseph did not live it quickly. From the pit to the palace, Joseph spent 13 years waiting. 

He had no idea while he was in the pit whether he would ever get out. When he was sold as a slave, he had no idea whether he would ever be anything more than a slave. When Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him and he was thrown into prison, he had no idea whether he would ever be free again. And when he interpreted the cupbearer’s dream, asked him to remember him, and then watched the cupbearer return to Pharaoh and forget all about him, Joseph had no idea that at the age of thirty he would be standing beside Pharaoh as second in command over Egypt.

At every stage, we know what comes next. Joseph did not.

If Joseph had never had those dreams, his misfortunes would have been one thing. But he had seen a future in which he stood above his brothers and even his father. And now, at thirty years old, he is still in prison.

What do you do with a promise like that when your life seems to be moving in the opposite direction? How did Joseph live with that kind of waiting? Did he wake up every morning wondering whether today would be the day? Or did he eventually stop expecting anything? Was he still praying? Was he angry? Was he disappointed with God? The Bible does not tell us.

And maybe that silence matters, because most of our waiting does not come with a narrator explaining what God is doing either.

We usually understand Joseph’s story because we already know the ending. But Joseph did not. He simply had to live through the middle.

That brings me back to Paul’s words: “Suffering produces endurance.”

We often think endurance means hanging on when things are hard. No matter the pain, we refuse to quit, and eventually we make it through. But I am not sure it is that simple.

Because sometimes people endure something for years and come out deeply wounded by it. Sometimes suffering makes us more compassionate. Other times it makes us guarded. Sometimes waiting deepens faith. Other times it leaves us wondering whether God is even listening.

So, suffering by itself cannot be the answer. Then what is endurance?

I want to be careful here that there are situations that we should clearly leave, injustices that we must resist, and sickness that we should seek treatment for. 

Having said that, what does Paul mean when he says suffering produces endurance? What kind of endurance is he talking about?

When we look at Joseph’s story, the Bible doesn’t tell us much about what he was thinking during those thirteen years. It doesn’t describe his feelings or emotions. But the Bible does tell us what he was doing.

While Joseph was a slave in Potiphar’s house, Potiphar noticed that the Lord was with him and gave him success in everything he did. Eventually, Potiphar entrusted his entire household to Joseph.

But why was Joseph doing everything so well?

He had been betrayed by his brothers, taken away from his father, carried into a foreign country, and sold as a slave. Why wasn’t he resisting? Why wasn’t he simply doing the bare minimum required of him? Where did he find the energy to care about Potiphar’s household when his own life had been taken away from him?

Then Joseph was falsely accused and thrown into prison. And strangely, the same pattern appears again. Genesis says that the prison warden put Joseph in charge of the other prisoners and eventually entrusted everything in the prison to him.

Again, why?

Joseph had already tried being faithful in Potiphar’s house, and where did it get him? Prison. Why would he continue to work hard? Why would he take responsibility for other prisoners? Why would he even notice that the cupbearer and baker looked troubled one morning and ask them, “Why do you look so sad today?”

Joseph himself had every reason to be sad. So what kept him engaged with life when his own life seemed to be going nowhere?

Joseph himself is a prisoner. He has enough problems of his own. Yet he still notices that someone else is hurting. Maybe this is the clue to what endurance looks like.

Endurance does not mean pretending that everything is fine. Joseph even asks the cupbearer to remember him and help him get out. He still wants his circumstances to change. But while he is waiting for the situation to change, he has not stopped living.

Maybe endurance is not simply hanging on until something happens. Maybe it is refusing to let the thing we are waiting for become the only thing our life is about.

Joseph still had work to do, people to notice, and responsibilities in front of him. His future was unresolved, but his life was still happening.

And if you live that way long enough, perhaps something begins to happen inside you. Day after day, you are learning how to live without having the answer you want. You are learning how to remain responsible, attentive, and faithful even when your future is uncertain.

Maybe that is why Paul does not stop with endurance.

He says: “Endurance develops strength of character.”

So perhaps endurance is not only about surviving the wait. Perhaps the way we live while we wait slowly shapes the kind of person we become.

At the beginning of the story, Joseph was a young man telling his family about dreams in which they bow before him. Years later, those same brothers actually are standing before him, bowing down, and Joseph now has enormous power over them.

He could have destroyed them. Instead, eventually, he feeds them, protects them, and brings the entire family to Egypt.

I do not want to say that Joseph needed betrayal, slavery, and prison in order to become a better person. Scripture never says that.

But I do wonder whether the years between the dream and its fulfillment changed the man who eventually received the power.

Perhaps that is part of what Paul means when he says endurance produces character. The circumstance may not change for a long time. But somewhere in the waiting, we may be changing.

James says something very similar to Paul:

James 1:2-4 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

I do not think James is asking us to enjoy suffering or pretend that something painful is actually good. He seems to be looking beyond the suffering itself to what might happen in us through it.

He says, “Let perseverance finish its work.”

What does that mean?

It almost sounds as though endurance is doing something to us while we wait. Maybe that is what we were seeing in Joseph. His circumstances did not change for years, but his life did not completely stop while he waited. He continued to work, to notice people around him, and to respond to what was in front of him. And perhaps that is where endurance begins to shape character. Not because suffering itself makes us better. But because when we cannot control what is happening to us, we are still making choices about how we will live inside it.

Will disappointment make us withdraw from everyone? Will unanswered prayer make us stop caring? Will waiting become the only thing we can see? Or can we somehow remain open to God, to other people, and to the life that is still happening around us?

Maybe that is part of what James means by letting endurance do its work.

Years later, Joseph says to his brothers:

Genesis 50:20
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Their betrayal was real. But somehow, none of those things were able to have the final word over Joseph’s life.

Maybe that is the hope Paul is talking about. What happens to us does not have to completely determine what happens within us.

When Paul says suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, maybe he is not describing an automatic process. Maybe he is describing what grace can do with suffering when suffering cannot yet be removed.

It can teach us to keep living while we wait. It can slowly loosen the grip that one unanswered prayer has over our whole life. It can form something in us that we may not even recognize while it is happening. And perhaps, over time, it can give us a different kind of hope. A hope that says, “I do not know how this will turn out, but I do not believe this moment gets to define the whole story.”

So maybe endurance is not having an explanation. Maybe sometimes endurance is simply continuing to live with God while we are still waiting for one.

Discussion Questions

1. How do we keep one unanswered prayer from becoming the center of our whole life?
2. Looking back, has there been a season of waiting that changed you, even though you did not see it happening at the time?

C-J: Kiran, I think this is your internal dialogue, because I remember you saying, “I’m at this point where I really don’t know what’s going on. I’m kind of lost.” But you’re right on time. You’re at that age. You’ve completed your degree. You have professional credibility. But maybe, “I’ll become a pastor. Maybe this is what I should do. I have this passion. I have this story.”

I think you summarize the human experience when grace is present: waiting. We understand it as a training ground. It may not look like what other people think of as training—how many reps did you do?—but God is saying, “Have you noticed?” God was teaching him about systems, about how to identify danger, pain, the unspoken word, and interpret it correctly; how to choose those who will help teach you and inform you and give you access, rather than see you as arrogant or, “Aren’t you special?” Then God says, “I’m going to show you how special you are. Now I’m going to put you in a place where you’re the last to be fed.”

But through all of that, God is saying that the endurance piece isn’t really the hardest part. The hardest part is the wait. You’re in that time warp. What are you doing with it? What are you doing with that time? What is God revealing?

For me, I keep it on my whiteboard: “Every day is training day.” I’ve been waiting two years for confirmation of service connection, which would make my life much, much better. I’m waiting for a magistrate, and my service officer says to me, “I check once a week, Connie. I’m real confident.” I saw him at Stand Down, and he repeated it. And I said, “It’s okay. I don’t think about it.” I know it would make my life better, but obviously God has me in this place to learn.

If I’m sensitive to that—and this has been a very difficult week for me—I think it’s like an athlete: “Do it again. Again. Not that way. Do it the right way again.” Don’t allow yourself to stop until that muscle memory is predictable and accurate. Sometimes, when we think nothing is happening and we’re not growing—it’s just the same old, same old—God is saying, “One day you will be tested, and you will see just how much you’ve learned, or what you still need to do.”

This was my week. Even after 18 months of being in counseling for self-regulation and all the stuff that goes with it, it didn’t really feel like much was happening. I was just being faithful to my mission. I’m just going to do it, and I’m going to pay attention. But this week God said, “And you didn’t think you learned.” Well, it could have been a little better, but I was surprised that I didn’t fall apart. I was surprised that I didn’t become explosive and completely dysregulated. I made a plan. I used my tools.

I think this is what every person who gets to your point in life says: “I’m not going to waste my time struggling upstream against a current that’s a riptide. I can’t change it. I’m going to drown.” We finally understand that there are systematic expectations throughout life. You can’t run until you walk. You can’t be an advocate until you learn the language and know how to use that language. You need to make alliances with the right people. You need to understand that nothing is wasted in God.

Somebody invites you to a party, and you say, “But I don’t like those people, and I don’t like that food, so why would I go to that party?” Well, it wasn’t about that. This person asked you to go. Now, if that’s the voice of God in a human being, you show up. You get there and God says, “I have a surprise for you.” “Really? Where is it?” “Well, that problem you had? I’m going to take you to this table. You’re going to sit down. That person has the answer to your problem.”

I see that with God. It’s humility. It’s intuitive. It’s seeing God in all things, with an expectation of, “I don’t know what you’re doing, God, but I’m present.” To see God in all things is really hard, but we get much better at it. I love being in my 50s. The light goes on a little quicker, and you recognize that voice. Or you say, “I have no idea where I am, so I’m just going to sit. I’m just going to rest and wait until it’s very clear.” Because sometimes sitting means someone’s on their way. But if you move, then it’s not going to happen. Leave it in God’s hands.

David: I couldn’t help but wonder: if suffering is what produces character, then what do joy and peace and general satisfaction with life produce? Jesus, in the Beatitudes, seems to me to imply that there is no more blessed state than to be suffering and to endure it. And Jesus’s whole life is almost as though He Himself pursued his own suffering.

So, is that what we should aim to be doing? Should we be seeking out suffering—not in others, but for ourselves? That would seem to be the holy way forward. Again, it’s a matter of having faith that this life is but the temporary step in our spiritual journey, and that faith is what makes the suffering endurable. There is something on the other side of suffering. But if you don’t suffer, how can you apprehend the possibilities?

C-J: Enjoying peace or affirmation—and as for suffering, there are lots of people who seem to have silver spoons in their mouths. I’m sure they have some blips on the screen of disappointment, but this kind of suffering—I think God has chosen you to be the voice in the room, because this is something you can’t read from a book. Now it’s yours.

This is something you have to personally experience: walk through the fire, be in the lion’s den, be hungry beyond, “I don’t think I can go more than this. I’ll just die.” And at the eleventh hour, you start to understand why. When you look at something, you can say, “Oh, that’s just terrible.” It’s much different when you walk over to that person and say, “May I help you?”—with dignity for that person. It’s very different. You cannot learn it from a book. You can look at it and say, “I can’t imagine.”

But when it comes together as God intends and the pieces fit into the puzzle, it is affirmation: “I’ve chosen you for this job. It wasn’t because I didn’t love you, or I thought you needed to be punished, or you were unworthy.” There is a training ground. It’s like being a Navy SEAL. Most of them fail, but the ones who endure have a tremendous responsibility, and many of them die in that process.

Being a parent and raising a productive, independent adult who goes out into the world, does no harm, and has a tremendous job—the accolades don’t usually go there. “Oh, you’re such a good parent.” The attention goes to the people who are hemorrhaging. But they are equally important, and they look different. The baby crying with a tooth coming in, a high fever—all those things take a level of endurance too. How long will this go on?

I think God trains each of us in a different way. But in the morning, the sun rises, and there is joy and affirmation that God was in the midst. I have to believe that. That’s been my personal experience, and I think everybody here has had that experience. You don’t live to get as old as we are without feeling like your feet are surrounded by cement, or saying, “I’m not going to get up this time. I’m just going to take a little nap. It’s too much.”

Don: The root of Kiran’s question is: what do you do with a God who doesn’t answer? It seems that none of us wants to worship a God who has no power, and the main outcome that we desire from worship is to control God’s power on our behalf. It raises the question: What is prayer worth, and what is prayer for, if it’s not somehow to influence God’s power on our behalf?

And to David’s question about whether we should be seeking suffering, I think most people would admit that they don’t need to look for suffering. Suffering finds them. But there’s something we’re missing in our understanding about what God is and how God works, because we believe that if we do the right things, if we have the right amount of faith, if we say enough prayers, if we have enough people praying, somehow God will hear our prayers and relieve our suffering.

But apparently there are factors that we don’t understand very well. I think the root of your question goes back to some things we’ve discussed before: What is the purpose of prayer, and what should our expectations of our prayers be?

David: I think the answer is in those pronouns we and our, because those expectations are not unreasonable. We do indeed expect that God will fix things, and I think we have every right and every reason to believe that. The problem is that we conflate we with me, and our with my.

I think back to the Lord’s Prayer, which is, “Our Father … give us this day our daily bread.” It’s not “give me.” It’s not “my Father.” It’s a communal prayer. And if you look at the world and the whole of world history, that prayer is answered every day. God is our Father; He does give humanity its daily bread every day. If He didn’t, humanity would never have grown as it has and continues to grow.

So if you look at it that way, it’s not personal. It’s not you or me, but it is Creation. It is Humanity. Then prayer is indeed answered, and that’s a wonderful thing, but you’ve got to get away from me and my. There is nothing at all wrong in saying that we expect God to exert His power on our behalf, because clearly He does that—but not necessarily on my behalf. On our behalf, I believe He certainly does.

Reinhard: I think endurance—and maybe I can add perseverance—is the word that we as Christians need to have. Of course, the question Don raised is about suffering. Some people never get out of suffering. Maybe we use the words “pick and choose” by God—that certain people are given relief or healing. But as humans, we face personal challenges: health, illnesses, or some plan or dream that we try to accomplish that keeps lingering and never comes.

Those are challenges we face every day. We may not experience, as in the past or in certain parts of the world, oppression for our faith, even the killing of Christians that occurs to this day. But if you look at the Bible, first about illnesses, remember Paul. In 2 Corinthians 12:8–9, he talks about the thorn in the flesh. He asked God three times, but God said, “My grace is sufficient for thee,” because God’s strength is made perfect in weakness.

That’s one answer. I think we have to look at how God works miraculously, and I think this asks us to remain faithful no matter what we face. Because after all, unless we see Jesus coming in the Second Coming, everybody is going to go through death. We have to face that. But of course, we always have the consolation that the life after this is going to be more glorious.

If the challenge is about something we dream of, I look at Abraham. When God promised a son, they failed because eventually Sarah influenced Abraham to go to her maidservant. They didn’t really trust God that Isaac would come. So that’s another challenge for us. When we are planning something, sometimes it seems too far away. Maybe some of the plans we have never come to reality, but some do. Life itself is a blessing. Most of us are already in our golden age here. We have to be thankful that God has been with us.

Another example, from external oppression, is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when the king of Babylon put them into the fiery furnace. They said that if God would deliver them, God would do it. But if not, they still would never worship the idol. I think this is the faith that we as God’s people need to have. Either way—A or B—we remain faithful.

Some of us never come out of illness. But I know some well-known people who have gone through suffering or blindness or other things and have said they are thankful they are in that position. It sounds strange, but they say that otherwise maybe they would never have become close to God. They see this weakness as a blessing. They know God and have a closer relationship with God because of this handicap.

Again, some of the questions we face in life we cannot answer. Only God knows. Maybe someday we will really know why this or that happened. One thing we have to do is remain faithful in whatever situation we have. We keep praying. Something can happen through all this turbulence in life. Just remember to keep our relationship strong with God.

Don: I think Reinhard put his finger on a very important concept by relating this to what Paul says about trying to remove the thorn from his flesh: God’s grace is sufficient for him.

It may be that our expectations from prayer are precisely not the way to think about how God responds. By inserting the subject of grace, one is compelled to set aside business as usual—the expectation of a response to us putting more effort into our pleading with God. Perhaps what suffering is designed to do is reacquaint us with the concept of grace: that it’s not how hard we pray, it’s not how hard we muster all our friends to pray, it’s not how hard we read our Bible and express our piety. It’s a reminder that God is in control.

And, as David says, in the big scheme of things, God’s goodness always outweighs evil by quite some considerable margin.

Sharon: One of the questions I have is: what role does personality play in the way that we look at suffering? I know people who have suffered tremendously, and they always remain positive. Then I know people who suffer little, and they’re extremely negative. Is that genetics? And are we blaming the victim if they don’t have a spiritual uptake on their perspective on suffering?

I think we can all cognitively restructure the challenges that we face. When we’re doing therapy with people, we work hard to have them practice the idea of cognitively rethinking it. But there are obviously so many aspects to suffering—whether it is physical, relational, environmental, or spiritual.

I ponder this notion of my own ability to lay this at the foot of the cross and give up my own agenda in exchange for letting the Lord do with me whatever He wants. I have a fractured relationship in my life that causes me deep, deep pain, and I pray about it, and I pray about it, and I pray about it. But the Lord doesn’t seem to answer my prayer about helping me resolve it in a constructive and positive way.

But I have this faith that somehow the Lord loves that person more than I do. So I cognitively override my own deep pain and emotion about that. My question to add to those other great questions, Kiran, is: What part does my personality play here? Am I personally, no matter what I do, maybe out of control anyway?

There’s just the idea of trying to keep them in the boat. I wonder if endurance isn’t about us just staying in the boat and letting the Lord bring us through the white water of life, with whatever that gives us, and trusting Him—that somehow greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.

My father always said, when we were struggling with teenage parenting issues, that the goal of parenting teenagers is not to steer the boat or navigate the boat, but just to keep your kids in the boat. I think that somehow maybe Jesus uses a similar strategy: to keep our endurance up by encouraging us not to try to navigate the boat, but simply to experience what we’re experiencing. And in that experience, to realize that greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. In the end, if we just stay in the boat, we’re going to be the winners.

David: That is kind of Daoist. Just stay in the boat. Stay in the Way. Don’t fight it. Don’t try to jump out of the boat, or climb out of the stream of life. It’s a very Daoist way of looking at the world—and of having that faith in grace.

Grace is everything. The thorn in the flesh you may have all your life. But we are assured, and I believe, that when it counts (which is often right at the very end, on the point of death) we will finally meet grace. Maybe some people are lucky enough to meet it sooner in life, well before death. But for all of us, it will be there eventually.

And given the infinitely small amount of time devoted to life on Earth compared with life in eternity, it barely matters whether that grace comes to us after a few years of this life or right at the end of this life. It’s not a big deal. The big deal is the grace itself and the assurance of that grace. The thorn is almost immaterial.

C-J: I think personality is really critical, but I think each of us is given an assignment. We come in here, we’re birthed into a family, we’re given DNA, we’re given an environment that informs who we become.

It’s hard to love the person with an unteachable spirit—the one who constantly disappoints, the one we bring before God saying, “I just wish I could love this person enough,” or, “I’m having trouble forgiving.” Whatever it is. I used to do that, Sharon, and it’s just spinning my wheels. I’ve decided it’s much easier to take my hand off the wheel and let God do what He wants in both my life and the other person’s life. If I’m spinning my wheels, I’m not paying attention to the road I’m on with God.

So it’s not that you’re lacking. It’s that you’re in a different place. And from what I know of you—which is not much, but it’s great—you are a very loving, benevolent, generous, kind person. When we get disappointed by those who don’t see who God sees in us, when they don’t see God in us, it hurts. It hurts a lot because we love them, and we want them to be their best self, and we want to be the best thing we can be for that person because we do love them.

I’m sorry. We always carry it with us, whether we’re talking about it or not. But it gets easier when I take my hand off the wheel and say, “Thy will be done.”

Kiran: One of the things I’ve noticed among a lot of my friends who are Christians is that pretty much everybody seems to go through suffering and waiting and a readjustment of their expectations about what God does in their life. Somehow it gives them a certain depth.

Naturally, I tend toward people who are opposite to my personality type, although I do have some people who are like me. But despite personality, all of them go through suffering. Some personality types do deal with suffering better than others. Introverts do worse because they internalize everything and go through so many loops. But having said that, suffering is somehow common to everybody.

I sometimes have conversations with people who are Muslims, atheists, or agnostics who have the same appreciation for suffering after they have gone through it. But there are also people, irrespective of whether they are Christian or religious at all, who have bitterness because of their suffering and still can’t resolve it.

So for me, suffering is not just some sort of medicine that makes you better. Something has to be mixed with suffering. I think grace mixed with suffering is what makes you better, or helps you to be positive despite what is happening to you. And that grace is not unique to Christianity. I have noticed a similar kind of God’s leading—even though they don’t call it God or grace—happening in people of other faiths too.

I think this waiting part is the worst part of every person’s journey. For some reason, when you look through Genesis, every major patriarch goes through a lot of waiting in his life. There are some people in life who quickly achieve everything they want to achieve and then later get into suffering. Some people suffer a lot in the beginning and eventually get to the place where they want to be. And for some people, it doesn’t even matter. They have everything they need, but they still suffer in their minds.

I’m just noticing this with our son going to kindergarten. It’s been one month since he started school. All the relationship stuff he’s talking about! He’s not worried about math. He’s already started reading sentences and all that. But the most pain he goes through when he comes back from school is about how other people behaved with him and why everybody is not kind. So he doesn’t have any cares, but he already has suffering.

I think what I’ve realized is that suffering alone doesn’t produce Joseph-like character. Grace mixed with suffering is the thing that produces that character. Somehow we all go through suffering, but the way we look at it—the lens through which we see these things—can make us better people. I feel that lens is grace.

I’m still thinking. I haven’t worked enough on this this week, but I’m going to go through the comments today, and then probably we can get better insights.

Reinhard: Before all this calamity and suffering we face, is the Lord’s Prayer: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” I think we have to have the attitude that we always pray for God to deliver us from whatever misery we might face.

Jesus also does not talk very much about what we suffer, except that He is always talking about the life after. Remember when the disciples came back from their mission and had done good things? Jesus told them to be happy that their names were written in heaven. Many times Jesus mentions eternal life or the life after: Do not be afraid of those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

If we look at the Old Testament, many times warnings came to the Israelites when God spoke through the prophets. Obedience was the issue, and with obedience you would have a good and long life. In the Old Testament, obedience is emphasized. King Hezekiah, when he was ill, had the prophet come to warn him. He humbled himself, cried, and asked God to extend his life.

And with Nineveh, through Jonah, there was a warning about the impending doom and calamity that might happen to Nineveh, and they all repented. Repentance, I think, brought the grace of God to them. In the New Testament, of course, we know about grace, and Paul writes about how to live as a good Christian and, number one, attaining salvation.

Jesus always emphasizes, “Be happy your name is written in heaven.” The life after is the greater emphasis. We should pray unceasingly and ask for God’s blessing, and of course I think the grace of God will be given to us. We are grateful as Christians because we know these promises. Again, the number-one issue here is the life after. I think that is the main thing we are looking for.

Don: We’ll look forward to Kiran’s analysis of our comments and to his taking us a little further down this road in our understanding of God’s grace and the human condition in which we find ourselves.

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