You're Gonna Make ItChikamu

PERSEVERING IN THE MIDST OF SUFFERING

The worst of all the seasons of life is suffering. Nobody enjoys or looks forward to it, but in a season of suffering, we need to remember that God is doing a ton in our life.

I just watched this with my teenage son, Obadiah. He recently decided to take up skateboarding. His buddies invited him to the local skatepark to hang out and learn. Obadiah was so excited. He grabbed his board and gear and headed out to become the next Tony Hawk. Or so he thought.

He was having a good time and learning to skate, and he asked, “Hey, can you guys teach me to “drop in”? (Never mind that he had just started skateboarding 20 minutes prior.) Things were going ok when on his fourth time trying to drop in, Obadiah crashed to the ground and broke his leg and ankle. It wasn’t a little fracture, either. It was totally mangled! If it sounds bad, it was worse. It took two plates and seventeen screws to put everything back together.

That accident was only the beginning of the story. Obadiah traveled down a long road of pain over several months, suffering in ways he had never experienced before. Between the crash, the ambulance ride, the emergency room, surgery, physical therapy, and countless trips to the doctors’ offices, he struggled to find his way through this unique season of suffering.

Still, he found his rhythm and grew a ton in the process, but he had to make many choices along the way. Could he keep his eyes on the reality that much of this was hard but temporary? Could he keep himself from reinjuring himself and undoing his progress in his desire to get back to normal? Could he persevere in his daily physical therapy?

Along the way, there were peaks and valleys: beautiful things and painful things. What is amazing is that God doesn’t promise us a life without suffering, but promises that our suffering will be purposeful. God wants to bear precious fruit in our lives as we persevere through seasons of suffering.

We have plenty of amazing Biblical examples of suffering, like Jesus, Job, the children of Israel, and the early church, to show us how powerfully God will redeem our suffering and bear unique fruit in the midst of it.