Suffering and Glory

Most of us who have started seminary already have a sense of the place of suffering in ministry – many seminary families struggle financially, for example, and have to live a simpler lifestyle than they once did. I find that I try to minimize the suffering that this causes our family at times – I try to think of it in terms of a challenge or game to figure out how to save money or make extra money. Other times, in order to avoid thinking about financial hardship now and in the future, I let our relative poverty make me feel better about myself – that someone we are more holy than others (ugh). I need to name it for what it is – its suffering and it sucks to not have money sometimes. It is a struggle to have integrity in my suffering – to legitimately recognize the sacrifice we are making as hard and painful, but to also not turn it into my own glory. Instead I give the glory of my own suffering to Christ.