Danyelle Catoe- Suffering really reveals a lot about a person

Recently, I have been reading a lot of Scripture concerning prayer, and really studying how Scripture instructs us to pray for others. I have been praying for the hockey team a lot specifically, and while I have been praying for their salvation, I started out praying that God would protect them. I just wanted God to keep them safe and happy. Then I read 1 Corinthians 5:5- "You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, SO THAT his spirit will be saved in the day of the Lord." At IV chapter retreat we also talked about the prodigal son, and how he didn't return until the famine hit, and "he began to be in need." (Luke 15:14). If I truly love the team and want them to be saved- I should also be praying that they would suffer SO THAT they would be led to Christ. How many testimonies involve someone having so much success that realized that God must exist? There aren't that many! Most testimonies that I have heard involve a time of suffering.

These passages also reminded me of Till We Have Faces. It is relatively easy to draw parallels between these passages and the plot to this Greek myth as retold by C.S. Lewis. Orual is angry with the God for taking Psyche from her. She questions why the Gods are so cruel, and throughout the rest of her life, she is constantly questioning the Gods. However, through her anger with the Gods, she is eventually led to them. In her desperate search to find Psyche, she saw the god’s palace. However, she quickly forced herself to believe that she had made it up; surely the gods couldn’t be real. Everything logically told her that they must be made up. So she made herself forget.

But at the end of the story, Orual sees Psyche again, and she sees the gods. She finally accepts that they must be real. In the same way that she was able to find the god’s through her suffering, many people are able to find God through suffering. It may be hard to pray for our friends to suffer, but if Scripture is true, then it is much better for them to suffer for a bit now and learn the Truth, than for them to live happily now but die ignorant of God.