I wondered why God wouldn’t respond to my earnest pleas, suspicious that he had cursed me, rather than blessed me. My sole focus was getting relief, so I was puzzled by verses like these: “Count it all joy my brothers when you meet with trials of various kinds” (James 1:2) and “It was good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119:71). Trials made me miserable. Nothing about affliction seemed good.
Can sickness and suffering be better than health and prosperity?
In a world that lives to avoid pain, that question may sound ridiculous. Not only pleasure-seekers, but even the religious, view suffering as entirely negative — a sign of God’s disapproval. In most world religions, health and prosperity are the reward for a good and faithful life, while sickness and suffering are curses, the result of evil deeds in this life or a past one. The American prosperity “gospel” perpetuates these lies, equating health and material blessings with our faithfulness and God’s favor, and sickness with a lack of faith.
My Life of Sickness
At times, I almost agreed with them, though, particularly when my prayers felt unanswered and my pain relentless.
I wondered why God wouldn’t respond to my earnest pleas, suspicious that he had cursed me, rather than blessed me. My sole focus was getting relief, so I was puzzled by verses like these: “Count it all joy my brothers when you meet with trials of various kinds” (James 1:2) and “It was good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119:71). Trials made me miserable. Nothing about affliction seemed good. I looked enviously at people who had what I wanted and longed for an easier life.
Contracting polio as an infant, I’ve always been physically limited, unable to run or hike or even be outside by myself. Instead, I learned to love “indoor” activities like crafting, painting, and cooking, happy to do anything creative with my hands.
The diagnosis of post-polio syndrome changed that, narrowing my physical world even further so that now I sometimes struggle to pick up a glass. I live with daily pain that was once just occasional. Rather than making my life harder, however, each physical loss has been a strange gift, one that has increased my dependence and love for God.
Testimony of Sufferers
My experience is not unusual. Christians around the world and throughout the ages have experienced the unique blessing that God gives us in sickness and suffering. Hudson Taylor, the well-known missionary to China in the 1800s, reported,
The deepest, most precious, and most abiding spiritual lessons, which God has been pleased to teach me were learned in consequence of enduring my various experiences of sickness. . . . I feel it would have been nothing short of a calamity to have missed the physical suffering through which I have passed. . . . I am positive that I have sometimes met with God’s refusal to heal when I have been most in fellowship with him.
