Soul Suffering
Originally Published in the South Jetty Newspaper When my mentor Pittman McGehee published his book The Invisible Church, started reading and could hardly put it down...until I got to the section on Suffering, then I wanted to either walk away or at least skip ahead. I don't like suffering (does that seem redundant?) McGehee makes clear that the suffering he writes about isn't caused by physical pain, clinical mental illness, nor from abusive relationships. Those should be taken care of appropriately and directly. He writes, "The kind of suffering I'm talking about is soul suffering, and it seems to be a requirement for the building of soul...to suffer in the spiritual sense means to carry something until we know its meaning...When something happens that causes us to suffer, [we might ask] 'What is this leading to? What truth can I discern from this suffering?'...'What does this want from me? What is its meaning?'" Each of us has suffer