Your pain could be God prying open your life and heart to remove a gift of His that you've been holding on to more dearly than Him.

The Gospel frees us to speak honestly about the reality of pain, confident that nothing is riding on our ability to cope with or fend off suffering.

The good news of the gospel [for sufferers] is not an exhortation from above to 'hang on at all costs,' or 'grin and bear it' in the midst of hardship. No, the good news is that God is hanging on to you, and in the end, when all is said and done, the power of God will triumph over every pain and loss.

There's nothing like suffering to reveal how small and needy you are. Pain has the remarkable capacity to reveal the weakness of the things you're leaning on to make life worth living.

The pain cleared my vision, and once it was taken away, I realized just how much I'd been relying on the endorsement of others to make me feel like I mattered.

Your pain could be God prying open your life and heart to remove a gift of His that you've been on to more dearly than Him.

Grief, of course, is not something that operates according to a specific time frame, and it seems cold to suggest otherwise. Yet when we do not grasp that God is present in pain, we eventually insist on victory or, worse, blame the sufferer for not "getting over it" fast enough. This is more than a failure to extend compassion; it's an exercise in cruelty.