by Rev. Mark Creech
RevMarkCreech.org
You’ve likely seen headlines like this circulating online: “God is Not Late – He’s Readying You for the Blessings Ahead.” Or, a similar sentiment: “This is a season of repair. God is rewriting your story – not just patching the past, but creating something more beautiful than before.” After seasons of heartbreak and loss, such encouragement can feel like a soft hand resting upon the shoulder. We want to believe that our sorrow is a prelude to something bigger and better. But another part of us quietly wonders, what if the next chapter isn’t an outward blessing at all? What if the suffering itself is the work God is doing inside of me?
Because some valleys do lead to visible restoration, while others, just as important, even more important, lead instead to a transformation of character and a deeper surrender.
Romans 8:28-29 is often quoted to encourage and comfort those who suffer. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” No finer words of encouragement could ever be said. These words tell us that whatever trouble may come into our lives, God, in his benevolent sovereignty, will seize upon it with his grace and work it to benefit us.
But the good promised in this text is not always about something God gives us, but something God makes us: “to be conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). The shaping of that image often comes by means of wounds that humble us, nights that teach us to pray, losses that strip away every prop but Christ. That conformity – the restoration of the image of God in us – is the highest blessing heaven can bestow.
There is an old story of a master violin maker who sought wood only from the beams of ancient cathedrals. Those timbers had absorbed centuries of hymns, lament, wedding joy, funeral grief, praise, repentance, and worship. The wood had been exposed to the human soul long enough to resonate with depth and beauty. When fashioned into a violin, it produced tones no untouched wood could ever match. The strain didn’t ruin it. The strain seasoned it.
Suffering by itself only leaves a scar. Nevertheless, when suffering drives us to Christ, it leaves a mark of grace. As we lean on Him, look to Him, and draw near to His presence, His life starts to shape our own. The Scripture says that as we behold the Lord, we are “changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Our wounds do not vanish, but they do begin to shine with His likeness.
This truth is echoed in one of my favorite films, Little Big Man. In this movie, Dustin Hoffman plays Jack Crabb, who, for a time, lives among the Cheyenne. The wise old leader, Old Lodge Skins, calls his people simply “The Human Beings.” To the Cheyenne, to be a human being in their worldview is not merely to survive, but to live with courage, tenderness, humility, and reverence. Jack wanders through life, fails, sins, is wounded, and is disillusioned. His sorrows, however, soften him. They strip him. They teach him compassion. Then one day, after much loss and hardship, Old Lodge Skins looks at Jack with deep affection and says, “You are a Human Being.” He meant: the many troubles of this life have not made you harder. Instead, they have made you real – authentically human – in the highest sense.
Someone might say, “What’s so great about being conformed to Christ’s image? I’m not really interested in that. I want relief from this pain. I want deliverance. I want my circumstances to change. I want the relationship restored. I want some vindication – for others to know that I wasn’t wrong. I want to be appreciated and understood. I want success again. I want my life to feel like it used to feel. I want to regain the sense of control and confidence I lost. I want things to make sense. I want some measure of happiness again. This is what I want!!!” But to be conformed to the image of Christ is to become truly human again – human as God intended – formed in the same love, patience, purity, mercy, and truth of Jesus Christ – the perfect model of what it means to be truly human. The chiseling of pain hurts, but the sculptor is no amateur. He is restoring the image of Himself in us – that image marred by sin and the Fall. For humanity, there is absolutely nothing higher!
There is fellowship in God’s shaping of the sufferer. When sorrow presses the soul to Christ, we discover that He is not the distant Savior of stained-glass imagination, but the companion of those who weep – the Christ who shares and identifies with our grief – who holds our trembling hearts in His nail-scarred hands – who draws nearer in the dark than we ever knew in the light. The valley becomes holy ground where we find His presence more precious than any of the answers we seek.
One day, the shaping will be complete. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2). Every tear shed in faith and obedience will become part of who we are in glory. The more we are conformed to Christ in this life, the more fully we will reflect His glory in the life to come. What a tremendous honor!
For believers, some suffering prepares us for something extraordinary ahead; all suffering, nonetheless, prepares us for Someone above.
The carpenter’s chisel hurts the wood, but it forms the likeness of the Son. Like the wood of old cathedral beams that had absorbed centuries of hymns, sorrow, and praise, our lives, too, begin to resonate with a deeper tone because of what we have endured in Christ’s presence. When the carving is finished, the soul will sound with the incomparable music of Christ.
Moreover, Christ did not come to make us less human, but to truly make us human again. He took our flesh, bore our griefs, walked our road, and honored our nature by joining Himself to it. To be conformed to His image is to recover the dignity, beauty, and wholeness of what God intended humanity to be from the beginning.
That is the blessing of patient suffering.
That is the repair God does in our faithful sufferings.
That is the inevitable, glorious result of suffering with faith in the goodness and love of God.
