Comfort and Suffering

Remarkable are the extremes of faith and visible are the beloved who have experienced them. John the beloved disciple is seen in Da Vinci's last supper with his head leaning lovingly upon the chest of Jesus. What a tender display of love communicated and affection given by Christ to this one who drew close and confided in the deepest secrets of  Jesus. This is comfort. This is Christ. All is well, for a moment.

Fast forward to a desert island, a prison island of rock and sun, wind and rain, rough elements fit for the wild and the blistered and banished. Enter John the beloved and blistered. This time he is resting his whitened hair on a roll of straw after prayer. And he is taked in the Spirit! The scrolls and scenes unfold before him and he reels with the thrill of a man who is crossed in to eternal mind of God, to the future passed and yet to come. He has known comfort and with it peace. Now he knows suffering and with it revelation, deep and powerful as an deep ocean current sweeping time and nations and planets and the souls of the living and the dead  in a rhythm of culmination ending in recreation of all that is known.

I am always ready for comfort, like John. I seek it. But I never seek suffering, it finds me, elusively, like living on Patmos found  John; prepared and unprepared, angry and embarrassed, reconciled and repentant, searching for meaning in pain. Not  knowing yet  that the revelation to come will be sweet and holy, terrifying and enlightening and both His and mine. Comfort and suffering are both a gift to one who will embrace them as divine love. Welcome.