Stress Test Devotional May 18
May 18, 2024
EPHESIANS 4:2 | 2 with all humility and gentleness, with
patience, bearing with one another in love.
Love, Lewis Smedes says, is the ability to “suffer long” and do so creatively. When we suffer we experience what we least desire to experience, like conflict or confrontation or fearsome challenges. A creative sufferer can affirm life in the midst of struggle—and this is the power of agape love. Erotic love has no power to suffer—its whole focus is to overcome suffering. Loneliness gets overcome by connection, anxiety by being seen as attractive. Our eros drive only suffers when we do not get what we want and it cannot suffer long without dropping away.
In really deep communities we will not always get what we desire and so they will only thrive if we learn to suffer some evils and difficulties with patience and courage. We do not accept bad things but we endure them. As imperfect people being made new in Christ, we will bump up against each other, let one another down, and misunderstand one another. Continuing to see our companions as necessary for our own development and us as critical for theirs is crucial.
Can you suffer long and creatively?
