The importance of suffering

Living in the United States, I find that there are two related characteristics of our culture here that work against us as Christians drawing close to the Lord. The first is our rampant materialism, and the second is our resulting self-sufficiency. It is expected of everyone living in the U.S., including Christians, that we will work to be self-sufficient. As Christians then, how do we learn to rely on the Lord? This was brought home to me again by a recent trip to Calcutta India, (now called Kolkata), and my ingrained need, (and at times demand), for comfort. We simply do not know how spoiled we are until we go to another culture where comfort is not so accessible. Here in the U.S., I know that most of us seek to avoid suffering, but that keeps us from experiencing what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians chapter 1. While Paul doesn't go into detail about what his sufferings were, we can tell that they were significant, because in verse 9, he tells us that they were beginning to think they were going to die. But Paul goes on to give us the jewel in this section when he points out that the purpose God had for the suffering they experienced was to make them rely more on God and less on themselves. That's a lessen we all need desperately here in the U.S. Yes, I know there is suffering of many different types here in the U.S., but we're not surrounded by it like so many places in the world. Our suffering is isolated and insulated, so that we're less often taught that we need to rely more on God. While Paul saw suffering as a necessary tool to draw him closer to God, I'm all too quick to see it as a punishment from God. It requires a paradigm shift in how we look at suffering...one from looking at suffering in completely negative terms, to seeing it as having the ability to teach us things that can't be learned any other way. It's a slow process, and one in which I have a long way to go.