Dark Night of the Soul
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How to Get the Most out of Your Suffering
Suffering in some capacity is inevitable. My shoulder aches from a car accident three months ago. I am a little down from lack of sunlight in the three and a half hour Alaskan winter days. I could go on, but you get the point. You have your list too, I am sure. But so much of the time, our suffering is a hamster wheel. We can get worn out trying to run from it, only to end up at the same place. Only now we are exhausted from running without purpose. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as…
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How to Make Meaning out of Suffering
Suffering without meaning is the hardest kind of agony to bear. Humans will put themselves through all sorts of torture, endure any kind of hell if only some meaning is attached to it. Parents whose children are killed by random gunmen or drunk drivers begin awareness campaigns. The thought that their children’s brief lives and sudden deaths held no meaning is the cross that is too hard to bear. Others of us begin to tell our stories, justifying the horrors faced by the hopeful thought that perhaps we can prevent even just one from going down the dead end we did. Or we frame our errors with inspirational quotes about…
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How to Tell if You Are in a Cocoon Phase
We Christians often like to talk about transformation, but the cocoon phase of that process is less glamorous. The Bible spills over with stories about men and women in cocoons of one sort or another. The message each time is the same. Some metamorphosis happens fast, but more often than not, change takes some time. The growth required to move from caterpillar to butterfly fascinates me. I remember as a child finding an exotic caterpillar in my backyard. I put it in a small plastic container with food and a stick. Soon a greyish sack, smooth on one side and puckered on the other, hung from the twig I had…
