Set Free

I was reading The Book of Wisdom, chapter 2. The unjust are planning to put the just man to torture and even death to see if "The Father" will come to spare him. The chapter goes on to say that God planned for us to be imperishable, but we messed up and now have death. Jesus is the just man. He has to experience the suffering and death at the hands of unjust people to defeat the perishable and restore "The Father's" plan.

So too us. We have to experience something as Christ's body to defeat it. The woman who suffered from arthritis, and could not stand erect, was touched by Jesus on the Sabbath. This is in Luke, chapter 13:10-17. Her suffering experience is healed. The Sabbath is the day that death, experienced by Jesus is healed. The defeat of a misery cannot come until we have first experienced it. Cancer is defeated with death. It is the ultimate cure. And then death is defeated, after we experience it, by being united to Christ.

Where this makes sense on a daily basis of psychological pain is in something like loneliness. We have to experience it before we can have it removed. Like Jesus upon the cross, this inner pain must be crucified so that with Grace, Christ union, we might even say, "Your will be done," and "Into your hands I commend my spirit." It is in suffering that we are transformed. In joy we generally forget about God, or say a passing prayer of thanks.

So maybe the miseries of our life have some purpose? Maybe God is in the suffering and has not abandoned me?