Christ suffered in a physical body to redeem us

Now we rejoice in our suffering, because it is a subset of His.

We are gifted to God, perfectly blameless and free of guilt. And shame.

All our suffering falls under the shadow of the cross of Christ.

It is therefore filled with significance, albeit a different significance.

Christ is fully identified with us, and we with him, and suffering is the link.

Now ….

…… pause, reflect, and then continue in the light of the preceding.

Practical Applications

Focus on the Big Picture 

“A master instructs his apprentice to fetch a handful of salt and pour it into a glass of water. The apprentice does so and takes a sip, then deems the water  bitter and undrinkable. The master tells his apprentice to sprinkle another handful of salt into a lake, then take a drink from the lake. This time the water is clear and pleasant. “The amount of pain in life is salt; no more no less,” the master says. “The amount of pain in life remains exactly the same, no more and no less. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in.” (Hindu parable quoted by Lost in the Valley of Death, p 189, by Hartley Hustad. Harper Collins, 2022) 

The bitterness of pain is diluted, even absorbed, by the lake. 

Christ is our lake.

Our four year old fell and scraped his knee. He ran in, screaming like a banshee on steroids. I envisioned sirens and the emergency room. There was a large box gift wrapped on the coffee table. He saw it and his face changed from anguish to delight, and he asked in an excited voice, “What’s that?”

Subjective pain was distracted by an objective reality