The Glory of God Amidst Suffering
Just this past week has been physically hard for me. Luckily, my workload wasn’t too much and I was able to get a lot of sleep. However, I caught a cold so I’m feeling exhausted by early evening and my lower back has been hurting a LOT these past two days. You have no idea how inhibiting it is to have lower back pain. I can’t put on my pants or my socks, or wash my face and spit toothpaste in the sick, or pick up stuff from the ground without needing to heavily support myself with my arms. Even when I sit in class, I sometimes need to support my back with my other arm; I’m afraid to sneeze. Simply put, life is really hard when you can’t bend past 30 degrees (good thing our culture doesn’t have us bow to elders, because I’d be soo disrespectful, haha).
But God has been teaching me a lot of things through this. I was super tired yesterday and I seriously did not feel like praying the Rosary at all. When I started praying, I was telling myself that I’ll just pray the beginning; then it was one decade, then suddenly I found myself powering through the entire Rosary. That was for Wednesday, which was the Glorious mysteries.
Indeed, God has been glorified through my suffering. When that hit me this afternoon as I was reflecting upon this entire freshman year in college, I got super emotional.
Even in sickness and death, the glory of God will shine through.
It goes with this week’s Gospel passage as well (John 11: 1-45), about Jesus raising Lazarus from death. This passage really blows my mind in so many ways, but in context of this situation that I am in right now, I am moved by what Jesus says:
This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.
I happened to come across this verse that struck me the first time I read it also, from 2 Corinthians 12 : 7-10
Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hard ships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ, for when I am weak, then I am strong.
One thing that I learned from this experience is that Jesus is with us in our hardships, and if we “die to ourselves,” then God’s more sustaining life will flow through us. So I know all of us have lots of heavy burdens in our lives - physically, spiritually, and emotionally. But accept them because pain reminds us how weak we are and how strong God is; once we accept them, we can turn them over to God so that He can bring us healing, and show His glory through it!
AND EVEN GREATER, I started writing this at around 5pm; I saved it because I had to go, and when I got back at around 11pm, I took a shower. When I got out of the shower, I CAN BEND MY BACK AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!! I don’t know how, or how long it’ll last, but WOW.
GOD IS SOO GREAT. PRAISE GOD! (: