When I was in high school, I developed a severe case of gastroparesis, or paralysis of the stomach. There’s lots to say about the six subsequent years of going in and out of the hospital with this illness and eating disorder (in fact, it’s the opening chapter of my book To Be Made Well and also shows up in White Picket Fences). Still, one thing I haven’t written about is that after I got sick, I began reading the New Testament for the first time on my own. I had been a churchgoing kid, but it wasn’t until I was 87 pounds and lying in a hospital bed and not knowing what my future held that I realized it mattered whether God was real, and, if God was real, whether God was good and loving, and in fact loved and cared for me.
I read the New Testament that summer, and when I read Romans 5:3-5, the words leapt off the page as though they had been handed to me and me alone. Paul writes,
“For we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, for suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us…”
That passage meant so much to me that I memorized it. I have a portion of that verse in a little frame on my desk to this day. But I haven’t returned to it in a long time. I’m reading Romans again now (with Susan Eastman’s wonderful commentary as my guide), and over the weekend I realized I have never paid attention to the end of the verse. “And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”
This final clause about God’s abundant and everflowing love is actually the most important part of the passage. For years, I’ve missed the foundational point here. Only because God’s love is already present, only because God’s love is what undergirds our existence and this whole world, only because God’s love is with us and for us, even the worst things, even the suffering, even the pain and hardship and fear and grief, even those things can lead us to hope.
When we face suffering and grief and fear and loss without an awareness of the bedrock love of God, without the truth of our own belovedness and the love that holds this whole broken world together—without that truth, suffering does not lead to hope. It leads to despair. It leads to anger. It leads to cynicism. It leads to loneliness and division and hopelessness.
When I read this verse in high school, I thought all I needed to do to have hope was to endure suffering. I needed to tough it out, trusting in God. But I now see that the invitation this verse—and so much of Scripture—holds is to rest in the love of God. The faithful, gentle, patient, enduring, character-producing love of God. To live in the fact of my belovedness amidst both the storms of life and the peaceful seasons.
I need that invitation, and that reminder, every single day. There is a wellspring of love always flowing, always available, always holding us, and if we believe and receive that belovedness, even the worst things can lead us to hope.
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