Suffering Is Never for Nothing

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:17

Elisabeth Elliot did not choose suffering as her subject. It chose her. By the time she was forty-six she had lost her chief language helper to murder, her language work to theft, her first husband to Waorani spears and her second to cancer. She had lived in the forest among the men who killed Jim, and she had been misunderstood by fellow missionaries and by many readers at home. When she spoke about suffering, people listened, because they knew she was not speaking from a study. And the thing she said most often, in five words that became a watchword, was that suffering is never for nothing.

What suffering is

She defined suffering very broadly. It was not only the dramatic losses — death, illness, betrayal — but every kind of disappointment and every kind of lack, large or small. The woman who longs for a husband and has none, the man who has a job he hates and cannot leave, the parents of a child who has gone astray, the elderly person who has outlived every friend: all of these, in her teaching, are suffering, and all of them are matters with which God is concerned. She took the small sorrows seriously as well as the great ones, and she had no patience with a ranking that told people their pain did not count because someone else had worse.

That broad definition had a practical purpose. If suffering is as wide as that, then everyone is suffering in some way, and everyone needs to know what to do with it. Her teaching on the subject was not a special consolation for the bereaved. It was a basic part of the Christian life.

The seed and the harvest

In A Path Through Suffering, published in 1990, she worked out her teaching through images from the natural world. The book draws on the little parables of Lilias Trotter, the Victorian artist who gave her life to mission in Algeria, who had found in seeds, leaves and flowers pictures of the way life comes through letting go and dying. Behind them all stands the Lord’s own saying about the grain of wheat.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. JOHN 12:24

Her point was that in God’s world death is the way to life, and loss the way to fruitfulness. This is not because suffering is good in itself. It is because God, who raised Christ from the dead, is in the business of bringing life out of death. The seed does not enjoy the darkness of the soil, and Scripture never asks it to pretend it does. But the soil is not the end of the seed’s story.

Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. JOHN 15:2

Underneath this, and more important than any illustration from nature, was the cross. She believed that the Christian’s suffering can only be understood in the light of Christ’s. He did not avoid suffering; He walked straight into it, for the joy that was set before Him. And the cross, the worst thing that has ever happened, the murder of the Son of God, became the means of the world’s salvation. If God could do that with Calvary, her teaching runs, He can do something with our smaller crosses.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. HEBREWS 12:2

She also pressed the apostolic teaching that believers share in Christ’s sufferings. Suffering is not a sign that God has abandoned us; it is part of what it means to belong to a crucified Lord. Paul wanted to know Christ not only in the power of His resurrection but in the fellowship of His sufferings, and she believed that this fellowship was a privilege, though rarely one we would choose.

That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death. PHILIPPIANS 3:10

Never for nothing

What did she mean by saying that suffering is never for nothing? She did not mean that every suffering has a purpose we can identify. She was clear that we usually cannot. She meant that God wastes nothing. No pain endured by one of His children is meaningless in His hands. It may teach patience; it may humble pride; it may prepare us to comfort others; it may simply be the place where we learn that He is enough. And beyond all that it is preparing something eternal, a weight of glory that will make the present affliction look light.

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. ROMANS 8:18

She was also clear that suffering is not automatically sanctifying. Pain can make people bitter as easily as it makes them holy. What makes the difference is what we do with it — whether we resent it, or receive it from God’s hand and offer it back to Him. That movement, from acceptance to offering, is the subject of the next chapter, and in her teaching it was the key to everything.

Weighing it

Her teaching on suffering is deeply biblical, and it has helped a very great number of people. It is also demanding, and two cautions should be carried with it.

The first is that she wrote from a position of great personal strength and a temperament not much given to display. Some readers, especially those in raw grief, have felt that she moved too quickly to the lesson and too slowly through the tears. Scripture allows a long time for weeping. Job sat in the ashes for many chapters before God spoke, and the Lord Himself wept at a graveside where He was about to raise the dead. The promise that suffering is never for nothing is true, but it is not always the first thing a grieving person needs to hear.

The second is that the language of fruitfulness can be misheard as a promise of visible results. Some suffering bears no fruit that anyone on earth will ever see. The grain of wheat dies in the dark, and the harvest may be gathered long after the sower is gone. She knew this; her own first language work came to nothing. The comfort is not that we will see the reason, but that God will not waste the loss.

Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. HEBREWS 12:11

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Taking suffering as broadly as she did, where are you suffering now — in a great loss or in a small, daily disappointment? Name it plainly before God.

2. Read John 12:20–33. Consider what in your own life may need to fall into the ground and die.

3. Think of someone who comforted you in a past trouble out of their own experience of pain. Thank God for them, and if you can, thank them.

4. Is there a suffering of yours that has made you bitter rather than gentle? Confess it, and ask God to begin to change its fruit.

5. Obtain A Path Through Suffering, or one of Lilias Trotter’s own little books of parables, and read one meditation each day this week.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You endured the cross for the joy set before You, and You know every sorrow I carry.

I do not understand why You have allowed what You have allowed. But I believe that You waste nothing, and that my suffering is not for nothing in Your hands.

Keep me from bitterness. Let what has broken me make me more like You, and give me words to comfort others with the comfort You have given me.

Bring out of my small deaths the life that only You can give, and at the last the glory You have promised. Amen.