Suffering Ordained by God

Whether we wish to or not, we are going to experience suffering. God will ask us to make many sacrifices and expect many deprivations in our life. How will we be able to endure them all? In the same what that David did, namely, “for the sake of the words of your lips” (Ps. 16:4). It is enough for me to know, O Lord, that this is what You have asked for; that this is what You have willed for me. There is only one way to explain our difficulties: they are exactly the things that God wants us to experience and endure, and so “for the sake of the words of Your lips I have kept ways that are hard” (Ps. 16:4). David senses that, not only has the law been ordained by God, but so too have his sufferings, which are likewise expressions of the divine will.

The psalmist must discover and accept the proper relation to his suffering. If he can do this, he will have transformed his suffering so that in the end his only reality will be God. But if he continues to resist his suffering, refusing to find his salvation in it, his anguish will continue unabated. The question is ultimately this: will he offer himself as a voluntary sacrifice to the will of God, or not?

It follows, then, that the experience of suffering consists essentially of a conflict, for this is the moment when the soul is passing, as it were, through the “Clashing Rocks” of ancient mythology. In this dangerous passage, the soul has to make a choice, and the outcome will either break it into pieces or enable it to sail to its destination in God. And the choice comes down to this: will the soul accept or reject suffering? Will it make this suffering its own, or struggle against it, seeing it as something alien to itself?

Spiritual health is not found in the avoidance of suffering, but in its joyful acceptance. The psalmist’s dilemma lies precisely in whether or not he will accept his sufferings or reject them, which is another way of saying that the choice he needs to make is whether to accept or deny God.