“God is the only comfort. He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way. . . . Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair” (C. S. Lewis).

I think of what Jesus said that in this world we will have suffering and trouble. It’s not a matter of if but when. It would have been so much nicer if Jesus has said something along the lines of how in this world we will have kittens or bunnies or rainbows or perpetual sunshine. But He didn’t.

The fact is that we live in a beautiful but broken world. We live in a fallen society and to be adjusted to a sick society is to be sick yourself. Nothing works like it’s supposed to work, especially us. God wants us eventually to be happy, but I believe more than that He wants us to be holy and whole. And the way to get to Christlikeness isn’t through comfort but most often through discomfort and pain and sometimes suffering.

I guess the closest analogy I can think of is working out and getting in shape. Usually, both of those involve being extremely sore the next day. I never knew anyone who lost weight and got into shape by only doing what made them feel comfortable and good. But the end result is always worth the effort and the pain.

What God is making us into involves the same kind of discomfort and pain, but the end result is so much better than simply having a better physical body that will still wear down and get old in the end. God’s end goal is us looking like Jesus and coming into all that He created us to be. That’s worth any amount of sacrifice or suffering.