In fact, God loves you so that you can change. We push pain away with effort, pretending to be okay among the shiny, smiling faces at church or work.“Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. Defeated and lonely, many of us subconsciously attempt to detach from the grief in our bodies, excising it from our minds to feel accepted in the community of the able and successful. Already exhausted, we sink under the weight of existing as an aberration of the abundant life our Christian friends and families want us to project. We become lost in a chasm of overspiritualized pain and undervalued physicality, not knowing where our lives fit alongside a Christianity glittering with the veneer of abundance. In an increasingly individualistic society, where the space between self, tradition, and our embodied connection to each other feels wide, suffering can be a massive assault to our sense of self and our ability to hope. When we reduce pain to an individual problem, we don’t know what to do with ourselves and our stories. Sin is any Christian’s response to pain, poverty, and weakness that assumes they are individual problems to solve rather than places to patiently embody the solidarity of Jesus.

If our Savior chose to enter the human story in a human body, then we should enter one another’s places of suffering remembering we carry and extend the presence of Christ. “The Savior came and is coming again, but our healing is in his hands, not our own. This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers The kingdom is already and not yet living in its tension rather than panicking for release is the only way to be pulled into the trajectory of hope.” The relationships that were broken will be made right our relationship to our bodies, each other, the earth, and God will be fully and finally restored. Biblical hope is expressed not in certainty but in curiosity, hearts that acknowledge and accept Jesus is already King, lives that look for the restoration of his rule right here, people propelled by a willingness to see Jesus turn every inch of creation from cursed to cured.

Hope in suffering is never for a disembodied day when we can finally escape the bodies, relationships, and circumstances that have caused us so much pain. Our hope is informed and colored by John’s vision in Revelation 21: the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven. “Our hope is not in being beamed up to heaven upon death with suddenly perfected bodies.

Kj ramsey this too shall last