He who limps is still walking.
—Stanisław Jerzy Lec
Life is painful. Pain marks our entry into this life, our journey through this life, and our departure from this life. As the poet, Francis Thompson, once wrote, “We are born in other’s pain and perish in our own.” Even our best years are filled with the nagging hunch that something is terribly wrong with everything. As a result, we all—to one degree or another—walk with a limp.
Maybe your limp is physical in nature. From the common cold to the ravages of cancer, no human frame is exempt from the capricious and seemingly meaningless onslaught of illness, disease, and ultimately death.
Many suffer from an emotional limp. Clinical depression is the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide, affecting approximately 280 million people around the globe. I personally belong to those statistics, having been treated at one point in my life by two perceptive psychiatrists whom God skillfully used to perform emotional surgery on my soul.
Closely linked to our emotional makeup is our way of thinking, reasoning, and viewing life. We are psychological beings through and through. Yet here, too, we experience the bruising inherent to life in a topsy-turvy world. Unhealthy thought patterns—often acquired in our younger, more impressionable years—become deeply ingrained in our soul, producing mental ruts later in life that propel us in destructive directions. Unhealthy perspectives inevitably lead to unhealthy lives lived with a limp.
Physical, emotional, and psychological pain often leads to spiritual pain—lingering doubts about the goodness of God or even his existence. Consequently, many limp along from day to day, void of inner peace or any real sense of identity or purpose. Sometimes our pain is our own doing. We make choices that have their own destructive consequences. If you sow the wind, you’ll reap the whirlwind. Often, however, our pain is simply the result of living in a fallen world and being inseparably linked to fallen humanity. The Apostle Paul tells us that “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:22). Since we are all inextricably associated with fallen creation, we groan also.
It’s been said that philosophers and theologians are those who kick up dust and then complain they cannot see. Since I certainly don’t want to be responsible for such a dust storm, my purpose in my book Life with a Limp: Discovering God's Purpose in Your Pain is not to address the plethora of philosophical and theological perspectives proposed through the centuries in response to the question of suffering. Space does not permit such an expos.. Furthermore, many excellent works have been penned on the subject and, to borrow the words of John the Evangelist, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that could be written! My purpose is rather to recount my own grappling with one specific question: How do we walk and grow through our suffering?
Since the death of my firstborn son, I have wrestled intensely with God, seeking the answer to that question. Maybe you have also as you limp along through life. Thankfully, our Creator has not left us in the dark. Between paradise lost (Genesis 3) and paradise regained (Revelation 21-22), the Bible is replete with examples of those who walk through suffering. One of those is Jacob, the “God-wrestler,” whose life begins with a strut, but ends with a limp—a limp that ultimately taught him to lean upon the One who alone could satisfy the deepest longings of his heart. As I see myself in Jacob and have better come to see the “Jacob” in me, I devote an entire chapter to this biblical character who limps and finally learns to grow through suffering. This is the theme of the Interlude entitled Jacob at the Jabbok: Blessing from Brokenness (Chapter 5).
The life of Jacob, who wrestled with God, points us to Jesus Christ, who is God—our God who suffers. The famed British preacher, C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) once remarked, “God had one Son without sin, but He never had a son without
trial.” That is why we must always allow our limp in life to lead us to contemplate the cross of Christ—God’s final answer to evil and suffering. This is the theme of Part 1, entitled: Walking Through Suffering (Chapters 1-4). The prophetic words of
Psalm 22 will light the way, for there we discover six key principles that enlighten and comfort us as we limp through the night of suffering into the daybreak of hope.
While all walk through suffering, far fewer grow through suffering. This is the theme of Part 2, entitled: Growing Through Suffering (Chapters 6-10). Here we’ll examine the insightful advice of a martyr, James, the half-brother of our
Lord and author of the New Testament epistle that carries his name. This suffering saint tells us how to turn our trials into testimony as he points the way to discovering God's purpose in our pain, resulting in a different kind of happiness that will find its fullest expression in the promised world to come
where tears will be no more.
Following the example of the biblical poets and prophets, each chapter of this book is a form of prayer, a quest carried out on the knees as much as in the head. Anselm’s famous motto fides quaerens intellectum (“faith seeking understanding”) summarizes well my objective. My prayer is that this reflection
will also help others who are seeking to understand their own suffering in the light of God’s infinite goodness and wise, loving sovereignty.
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