The Healing Journey

February 2, 2024

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.”
— C.S. Lewis

The late Timothy Keller, author, theologian and the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, once wrote, “When pain and suffering come upon us, we finally see not only that we are not in control of our lives but that we never were.”

So few tragedies bear out the truth of that statement than the death of someone we love. Our lives are suddenly upended, and the things we believed were certainties no longer comfort us or offer solace. We live in anxiety and fear because anything is possible.

In his book, “Walking with God through Pain and Suffering,” Keller discussed the effect that personal loss can have on someone’s faith:

“Over the years, I came to realize that adversity did not merely lead people to believe in God’s existence. It pulled those who already believed into a deeper experience of God’s reality, love, and grace. One of the main ways we move from abstract knowledge about God to a personal encounter with him as a living reality is through the furnace of affliction.…Believers understand many doctrinal truths in the mind, but those truths seldom make the journey down into the heart except through disappointment, failure, and loss. As a man who seemed about to lose both his career and his family once said to me, ‘I always knew, in principle, that ‘Jesus is all you need’ to get through. But you don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.’”

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Your loss will change you. Be prepared for a deeper relationship with God.