Dynamics of a Spiritual Life

Last week was an amazing one. I took a class at Gordon called Dynamics of a Spiritual Life . This was my first class taught by a woman, Dr. Gwenfair Adams, an amazing professor of Church History, and although this was not a class directly on Church History, she incorporated elements of it into her lessons. This was an incredible experience. Dr. Adams made the entire week(because we were in class Mon-Fri from 9-4:30)exciting and alive and profound, with media and visual aids and a theme of "Wars and Weddings" running through the week. It was almost like a spiritual retreat!

One of the biggest discussions we engaged in was how we are part of God's great creation-redemption story, the meta-narrative, and how we also have our own smaller stories, in which we are the protaganist on a quest to know and glorify God. And every good story must have opposition and we talked of suffering and forms of opposition which can also include much of the unneccesary suffering we inflict upon ourselves.

So suffering has been on my mind, and most of mine has been of the unneccessary sort, and I have been thinking a lot about how cushy my Christian life is. Would I be able to withstand the suffering I have only heard stories about, of persecutions, of violence, of disease? And can my two month stint of unemployment really compare? What suffering will God allow in my life as it progresses?

And as I have pondered all this, I have gotten phone calls this week of suffering, of a friend who had a miscarriage, another family friend in a skiing accident who broke his back, and my sister finally surrendering to her endometriosis and undergoing a hysterectomy at 38 years old, and at the same time surrending to God her longing to birth a third child.

And all this reminds me of a woman I heard speak who was exposed to toxins during a horrible accident in her new home of three days when it was being treated for termites. This one incident cost her her health, her financial security, her sanity.

"But God..." she said.

But God, she explained to us, took into His hand what was meant for evil and her demise, and helped her surrender the pain and the situation to Him. And as she planted it in His soil, she was able to watch Him grow it into something beautiful and redemptive and good.

Please God grow something beautiful and good and redemptive out of my friend's miscarriage, my family friend's broken back, and my sister's hysterectomy.

Redeem, O Lord.