LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Perfected by Afflictions
"For it was fitting for him for whose sake all things are ... that, having brought many sons to glory, he should perfect by afflictions the author of their salvation" (Hebrews 2:10).
According to C. S. Lewis, pain in itself does not always have spiritual value, or produce spiritual effects. But there is something collateral to pain that always becomes a real help to the sufferer: it is fear and compassion. They broaden the spectrum of mere pain.
Indeed, fear and compassion help us more than pain itself, in our return to obedience and charity. We have all experienced the effect of compassion, which makes it easier for us to love the unlovable, that is, to love human beings not because they are pleasant to us, but because they are our brother or our neighbor. And not only that, because suffering produces the same good effect -compassion- also in the spectators.
On the other hand, we have all learned the benefits of fear during periods of crisis. The crisis comes at a time when our life was slipping in the midst of vanity and apathy. Suddenly, a sudden pain in the stomach threatens serious illness, or the newspaper headline threatens us all with destruction. And then that whole house of cards comes crashing down.
At first we feel overwhelmed, and all our little joys seem like broken toys. Then, little by little, we remember that the purpose was never for all those toys to take over our soul, that our true good is in another world. And we lift our gaze from those broken toys to our one true treasure: Christ. And perhaps, through God's grace, we become dependent creatures of God. But as soon as the threat disappears, our nature leaps back to the toys. We even dare to expel from our minds the one thing that sustained us in the face of the threat, because we associate it with the hardships of those few days.
Thus, the terrible need for tribulation becomes all too evident. God has held me close for barely forty-eight hours, and that only because everything else has been taken from me. But, enough that the pain ceases, and I behave like a puppy again when the hateful bath is over: I shake myself as dry as possible, and run to retrieve my comfortable dirt on the nearest dung heap.
Such is the reason why tribulations cannot end until God either sees us remade, or sees that there is no hope for us to be remade.