SUFFERING

SUFFERING

Why, the question always asked when something happens to cause suffering.  This world is where suffering breeds and there is no pill I can take to be immune against suffering.  There are no solutions although the world sells a bill of goods mostly through advertisements, philosophical views based on good reading and my desperation to avoid suffering.  Escaping suffering does not come from a new car, looking younger, having loads of money, having every new thing on the market and the like, which are suppose lead to a place of happiness, peace, a place of euphoria.  All this does is give those who sell the bill of goods a headache of how to maintain their wealth and status. 

I have found for me my sufferings are from:

·       My decision making process that is usually not well thought out and I realize too late I am in a mess causing much suffering not easy to escape.   

·       My suffering came from blaming everybody and everything including God. 

·       My deplorable relationship with God was one to bail me out rather than a relationship of love, trust and faith.

Thankfully for me I prayed not in the earnest and faith as I should and certainly without much understanding however, Our Lord used what little I had and work from there.  I could move either in ORDAINED WILL of God or His PERMITTED WILL.  His ordained will is His calling on my life and His permitted will is what I do outside His ordained will and yet He is with me. 

It was in 2001 I began a conversion process that in the end I came to a truth most of my suffering was my fault for I chose to live out of the ordained will of God.  Whatever sufferings I endured was of my own doing for I was in a life and place not ordained by God for me.  Our Lord taught and directed my spiritual life to where He wanted to be.  This process is ongoing up to this present moment. 

I learned one can never escape suffering for it is there even in the ordained will of God.  I live temporary here on earth in the temptations, s, and mercilessness that is always trying to shake my faith and trust.  However, suffering in the ordained will of God is redemptive.  It is here I take up my cross and follow Him.  My Lord suffered for my salvation and the opening of the gates of heaven for me.  Therefore, I offer my suffering to God as I unite to another’s suffering for the liberation from their suffering. 

It is when I unite my suffering to His redemptive suffering for me I see where I am weak He makes me strong and liberates the captives a task beyond me.  It is in suffering in a close relationship to Our Lord I was able to forgive and pray for those at whose hands I suffered.  Mostly I learned to forgive myself for the sins of my decisions. 

Our Lord, has restored my life from that which I squandered and renewed them back to me once again as if I never made those wrong decisions in my life, for that I am truly thankful.

 

©Linda Mary Liotino ME A SERVANT OF CHRIST MISSION

©Watercolor Painting entitled SUFFERING JESUS by FRANCO JOSEPH