Bottom

It’s strange to see a quietness settle into places once filled with noise after searing pain has laid waste to your life for a while.

I’m not sure if anything less than “searing” can do such a thing. Misfortune I’m able to tread through would only anger and embitter. I’d still be clenching my own grit to keep me afloat. I think I need to be dragged to the absolute bottom sometimes. The disordered priorities and self-sufficiency have to be drowned out. 

I’ve not spent much time thinking about how visceral & consuming the trials we’re promised in Scripture might be. Future suffering is so formless and shadowy. It can be easy to dismiss or underestimate it. But some of this language is very violent — certainly not as clean or manageable as I've quietly assumed:

For you, O God, have tested us;
    you have tried us as silver is tried.
You brought us into the net;
    you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
you let men ride over our heads;
    we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.

Psalm 66:10-12 ESV

As devastating as it is to have our heads ridden over, none of it is for nothing. John Calvin comments on Psalm 66 specifically:

When visited with affliction, it is of great importance that we should consider it as coming from God, and as expressly intended for our good.

My brain cells know that. They believe what Paul writes in Romans 8:28, and James in James 1:2, etc. The sovereign, loving God of the universe says that afflictions He allows are to our benefit; that the tests we shoulder have purpose, even if they're never revealed to us. That’s part of the reason we’re told to rejoice in them.

Still, all this feels like a worn-out platitude sometimes. It’s very hard to let the truth settle in my heart while my stomach is reeling at the same time. Maybe getting me to shut up & internalize that promise is another one of the gifts suffering offers. 

Whatever the case, there is some cold reassurance that none of this will mean end of us, even when we can’t possibly imagine a way out. Turmoil can never have the final word: 

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
    and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
    and the flame shall not consume you.

Isaiah 43:2 ESV

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 

2 Corinthians 4:7-10 ESV

There’s a passage in The Pilgrim’s Progress I came across a few weeks ago that nails this. Christian and his friend Hopeful are crossing the River of Death — a final trial before finally entering Celestial City. Christian begins to become overwhelmed with doubt and panic: 

Then they addressed themselves to the Water, and entering, Christian, began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waters, the Billows go over my head; all his Waves go over me, Selah. Then said the other, Be of good cheer, my Brother: I feel the bottom, and it is good.

A good reminder. The fear, uncertainty, and whatever else comes with suffering will drag us deep. But there’s a bottom down there somewhere, and it’s good.