Sunday, November 19, 2006

Truth

God can make use of all that happens. But the loss is real.

from Perelandra by CS Lewis 1898-1963

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Heidi. I think I needed to read that today.

Anonymous said...

Wow....pretty deep for my boots.
Paula

Heidi said...

With this post I wrestled with whether or not to let the quote stand on its own or to write about it on my post. It is so powerful that I was afraid writing about it would dilute it.

I came across this quote a little over 4 years ago during a time of deep struggle. I find sometimes we are quick to spout platitudes to people who are suffering - or even to beat ourselves up when we are suffering because we feel we should be strong and to look for the good that is going to come. We expect ourselves or others to buck up and toughen up and stop crying and look for the good in it all.

We are promised that God works things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. This is a profound and deeply reassuring.

Yet sometimes I think we can use it to diminish the reality of loss or pain.

I did some writing about this quote at the time I found it, and part of what I wrote then is that the Bible does not dismiss pain nor say that loss is small. The Bible is filled with people who experienced intense suffering, and that suffering is not minimized. The message of the Bible - even in saying that God works all things together for good - is not that loss is small but that God is BIG!

So . . .

God can make use of all that happens (and promises He will make GOOD use of it), but the loss is real.

I found it helpful during my time of struggle to have this acknowledged.

So, anyway, I decided to let the quote stand alone in my post but decided to talk about it here in the comment section.