It’s easy to romanticize physical suffering — especially when you’re not the one experiencing it.

Saints like Amy Carmichael, who spent over twenty years bedridden, and Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic who lives in constant pain, can evoke peaceful images of unbroken communion with God. We may imagine that it’s easier for them to endure pain and weakness than it is for the rest of us.

Yet the reality of physical suffering is that it’s insistent and intrusive. No one gets used to it. Pain demands our attention. Time slows to a crawl, particularly in the middle of the night, when we’re begging God for the relief of sleep. We feel alone and isolated. No one else can enter the prison that our bodies have become.

Pain Compiles

If that weren’t enough, physical pain rarely exists in isolation — it’s usually accompanied by loss, weakness, and dependence. Often, we require help with basic daily needs, and we worry about the burden we’re putting on others. We second-guess every request, not wanting to bother someone one more time. Will people get tired and think we’re “too much”? Do they resent their lack of freedom?

We longingly remember the carefree days before our physical struggles altered our lives, when we could do what we wanted. Now we measure our energy in teaspoons rather than buckets. We weigh every decision, every action. Saying yes to one activity means saying no to many others. It is hard not to envy those with fit bodies, who seem to have no cares.

Pain, loneliness, and longing can give way to depression and despair. We cry out to the Lord for relief, but relief doesn’t come. The cancer spreads. Sleep eludes us. The pain intensifies. The medicine stops working. The side effects multiply. Our caregivers grow weary. Our friends stop checking in. Our resources run dry.

Doubt Advances

The vibrant faith we once had begins to fade — which is exactly what Satan wants to happen as we suffer. He wants us to doubt and fall away from God, convinced that he is indifferent to our cries. Satan knows that we’re susceptible to discouragement when we’re physically depleted, so that’s when he attacks. As physical needs scream for attention, Satan whispers to us, “Does God even hear you, let alone really care for you? If he does, why isn’t he delivering you?”

“If God’s greatest blessing is himself, then perhaps sustenance is a more precious gift than deliverance.”

Insidious doubts slip in, making us question beliefs we once held rock-solid: Are we deeply loved by an all-powerful Father? As soon as we recognize the mental shift, we need to stop and cry out to God, asking him to meet us in our sorrow, to deliver us from our pain, and to show us evidence of his goodness and love. Are we fixating on all that we’ve lost, on how God hasn’t delivered us, on how hopeless we feel? Or do we recognize that God is with us, working for our good, and caring for us each moment?

What we think about in the moments of our deepest pain is critical. Our mindset will determine how we approach the questions that bombard us. Here are three common questions I’ve asked: (1) How can God be “for me” if I’m still suffering? (2) How can God use my weakness for good? and (3) What good can come in moments of overwhelming pain?

1. How can God be ‘for me’ if I’m still suffering?

Sometimes God miraculously delivers us when we plead for relief, like at the parting of the Red Sea. Other times he sustains us, as he did with manna in the wilderness. The Red Sea deliverance freed the Israelites, but their need for manna kept them dependent on God. In gathering manna, they had a harder time forgetting their reliance on God. And if God’s greatest blessing is himself, then perhaps sustenance is a more precious gift than deliverance, since it can keep us in constant communion with him.

Take the apostle Paul. He begged God for deliverance from his thorn in the flesh, but instead he received grace — grace to bear the thorn, grace to be content with weakness, grace that would carry him through other trials as well (2 Corinthians 12:7–10).

When we realize that we can depend on God in our weakness, we learn to trust him in everything. Anyone can thank God for quick deliverance from physical suffering, but we often forget him until the next crisis. Yet when he sustains us in our pain, we’re confident that he is with us always.

2. How can God use my physical weakness for good?

We may think our physical weakness is keeping us from maximum fruitfulness, but that’s impossible. Our weaknesses are a part of God’s plan for our lives; they are intertwined with our calling. Paul thought his thorn was hampering his ministry, but God knew that it was the key to his strength: it forced Paul to be wholly dependent on God. When we are depleted and exhausted, lacking any resources of our own — it is then that we fully rely on God.

And in that reliance, we discover the power of God flowing through us — the same power that raised Jesus from the dead (Ephesians 1:19–20). This power keeps us enduring when we want to give up; it showcases God’s glory and brings lasting change. Because Paul relied on God’s provision, he accomplished more for the kingdom with his thorn than he could have without it. His greatest strength lay in his submission to Christ.

Even Jesus’s greatest strength appeared in his greatest physical weakness. Throughout his ministry, Jesus impacted others by his actions. He calmed the storm with a word. He fed five thousand with a few loaves and fish. He cast out demons, healed the sick, and raised the dead. He turned the world upside down.

But at the end of his ministry, from the Last Supper on, Jesus allowed others to act upon him: he was led away, he was whipped and mocked, he was beaten and crucified. When he submitted to his captors, the crowds saw weakness rather than what was really there: Jesus’s strength and power.

Just before these horrific events, Jesus begged God to take the cup of suffering from him. But it was through Christ’s submission to the will of the Father — to torture and humiliation, to physical abuse and carrying his own cross — that God brought about the most astonishing display of his power and grace.

3. What good can come in moments of overwhelming pain?

Even when we’ve experienced God’s grace through our suffering, we may wonder how anything good could be happening as pain steamrolls us. Yet in some inexplicable way, this too can be part of our sacred calling. We can submit our pain to God even as we cry out to him, and we can plead for relief, as Jesus and Paul did, while offering up our pain as a sacrifice to the Lord.

“Perhaps the sacrifice of praise in our pain is the most exquisite gift we could ever offer him.”

Few people on earth will see the impact of our worship, and some will say that our physical suffering is a waste. Perhaps it is a waste — just as the woman with the alabaster flask was “wasteful” (Mark 14:4). She poured out her precious ointment as an extravagant act of worship, and its fragrance spread everywhere. There was no utilitarian purpose; nothing tangible was accomplished — but the impact of her seemingly wasteful sacrifice will echo through eternity, as saints recount her story forever.

Perhaps our offering to God, amid our agony and weakness, will have the same impact. Perhaps it is just as precious, maybe more so, in the sight of the Lord than all the work we or others do for him. Perhaps the sacrifice of praise in our pain is the most exquisite gift we could ever offer him.

Of this I am sure: no act of worship to Jesus will be wasted.

You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told. (Psalm 40:5)

As with so many of our favorite hymns, “The Love of God” was born in adversity. Frederick Lehman (1868–1953), who wrote the hymn with his daughter, had experienced the failure of his once-profitable business, which left him packing crates of oranges and lemons in Pasadena, California, to make ends meet. Again and again throughout history, deep and enduring trials seem to have a strange and beautiful way of swelling the waves of worship.

Perhaps the most memorable lines in the hymn, however, were not Lehman’s, but words someone had found scribbled on the walls of an insane asylum a couple hundred years earlier, words that had been passed along to Lehman and held profound meaning for him.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,And were the skies of parchment made;Were every tree on earth a quill,And every man a scribe by trade;To write the love of God aboveWould drain the ocean dry,Nor could the scroll contain the whole,Though stretched from sky to sky.

The lyrics, it turns out, were a translation of an old Aramaic poem (now almost a thousand years old). And while no one knows the name of the insane asylum patient, the circumstances of his suffering, or how he came across the poem, the lines sparkle with surprising clarity, hope, and, well, sanity. A kind of spiritual sanity that often eludes us.

More Than Can Be Told

That Lehman treasured the lyrics is hardly surprising. Living just a handful of miles from the Pacific Ocean, he would have known, with acute awareness, the roaring vastness of the sea, the tall and swaying elegance of palm trees, and the bursts and hues of California sunsets. Day by day, he held the brilliant orangeness of its oranges and smelled the lively tartness of its lemons. The ocean, the trees, the sky, the earth were enormous and familiar friends of his — and yet each so small next to the love he had come to know in Christ.

When Lehman looked at the sky, he saw a hint of something wider still. He sang, like David, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3–4). The sky above him awed him, and then humbled him. If God could stretch out heavens like these with his hands, why would he pierce those hands in love for me?

When Lehman looked out over the ocean, he heard a hint of something deeper still. “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). The ocean taught him of forgiveness, of a dark, far-off, forgotten place where God submerged our canceled sins. How could God possibly forget what we had said, and thought, and done? Well, he could bury them beneath the sea. And so he does.

“O Lord, how manifold are your works!” the psalmist sings. “In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great” (Psalm 104:24–25). The ocean is big, and crowded, and wild, and yet you, O Lord, are bigger still, and your love, wilder still. And while the ocean sang its choruses, the sand beneath his feet would occasionally interrupt: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand” (Psalm 139:17–18).

“If God could stretch out heavens like these with his hands, why would he pierce those hands in love for me?”

When Lehman stared at the towering trees above him, he tasted a hint of something higher still. He surely could not count the trees that surrounded him, and their numberlessness reminded him of the unsearchable greatness of God. He may have read of math like this in the Psalms: “You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told” (Psalm 40:5). More than can be told. Is there any better summary of the love of God?

Every Man a Scribe

Were we to fill that ocean with ink and stretch out scrolls to cover those skies, and were every tree, of every kind, a pen, and every one of us a scribe, we still could capture only hints and whispers of the boundless love of God. We would drain the ocean dry. And then still have so much more to say.

Let that never keep us from saying as much as we can. We ought to thank God for those, like Frederick Lehman, who help us taste and see and feel realities we will never fully grasp. We ought to thank God for the poor soul clinging to faith in that asylum. If he had not scrawled those words on that wall, from his embattled memory, would we have ever heard them? We ought to thank God for the pen that crafted those original lines, in Aramaic, so many years earlier. Who could have imagined just how far his words would float, like a letter in a bottle, and how many hearts they would brighten and strengthen over centuries?

And we ought to ask God for fresh words that might open worlds like these for others. How might we help others feel the love beyond expressing? If words fail us, we could start by writing the beloved lines where someone might someday see them.

Desiring God partnered with Shane & Shane’s The Worship Initiative to write short meditations for more than three hundred popular worship songs and hymns.

Sometime soon, consider conducting a little experiment. Grab a jacket, go outside, find a nice patch of grass to sit or lie upon, and then, for fifteen minutes, simply stare at the sky. Having conducted such an experiment myself, perhaps I can give you a sense of what to expect.

Expect, first of all, to feel strange. Unless you find a private patch of grass, you may be the object of spectacle and whispered concern. Thrust such discomfort behind you and stare on.

Expect also a small reacquaintance with natural elements often avoided: some dew upon the back, some aphid upon the wrist. Embrace them. For these fifteen minutes at least, you are an outdoorsman.

Then perhaps, with eyes upward, you may wonder what in the sky could keep you occupied for a full quarter of an hour. Bored, you may feel an urge for your phone; you may look at your watch and find that, no, ten minutes have not yet passed — only four.

But then, at last, you may begin to notice. You discern some variety among the billows above, and words from sixth-grade science class begin to drift beside them. Are those cirrus clouds? you wonder. And that — a cumulonimbus? You allow yourself to see again through a child’s eyes and observe now not clouds but the shapes of seals and bears, dogs and dragons. Between white wisps, you spy a faded half-moon, hastening late to its rest.

And then, maybe, you will begin to feel small, as the few square feet beneath you fit like a tiny photo in a large frame. A question may trail to your lips with new feeling: “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4).

Finally, if the Spirit opens your eyes and ears, you may hear a hint of that silent song always sounding: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). You may suddenly feel not alone, but enfolded within the vast and personal presence of God — glorious as the sun, inescapable as the sky, near as the next breath of air. And you may go back to your day different, carrying with you the song of the sky.

The Heavens Declare

The word heaven — usually referring to the sky — appears some seven hundred times in Scripture, from the very first verse (“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” Genesis 1:1) to one of the last (“I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,” Revelation 21:2). Saints of old found something worth seeing in the sky. They looked up a lot.

To them, the sky was wonderful. It was a castle for King Sun and Queen Moon (Genesis 1:16). A celestial clock chiming the days and seasons (Genesis 1:14). A spacious tent for the children of man (Isaiah 40:22). A stage for the players of cloud and wind, rain and lightning (Job 37:2–4). A canvas colored daily. A ceiling more beautiful than the Sistine Chapel’s. A friend ever familiar, ever new.

“To our fathers in the faith, the shapes of the clouds always found a way to spell one word: G-L-O-R-Y.”

And yet, the sky was wonderful only because it was something else first: personal. From clouds to constellations, from eastern rise to western set, the sky was God’s work. He names the stars and nightly bids them shine (Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 40:26). He raises the morning sun and scatters midnight shadows (Matthew 5:45). He throws thunderheads across the horizon and aims their every drop (Psalm 29:3–4; 147:15–18). And therefore, to our fathers in the faith, the shapes of the clouds always found a way to spell one word: G-L-O-R-Y (Psalm 19:1; 29:9).

Something deep within us answers back. Days of gray oppress the soul. Smog has a way of clogging not only the atmosphere but our hearts. When, some months ago, the smoke from Canadian wildfires coated Minnesota skies with ash, the loss was palpable. We may feel as dour as Puddleglum by disposition; even still, we can’t bear to live in Underland.

And yet, apparently, on ordinary days of blue and white, we can bear to give the sky barely a passing glance. While our forefathers traced the shape of God’s goodness in the clouds, and heard the shout of his glory from the sun, we often run through the world with heads covered, like men holding umbrellas on clear days. Fifteen minutes, even under a sky of wonders, can feel like a stretch.

Mobile Roofs

Several forces conspire to keep our heads down — some new, some old. We might group them under two main heads: we are disenchanted and distracted.

The biblical writers bear the marks of a holy enchantment with the heavens, an enchantment many find difficult to kindle today. Part of the problem lies in our large electrified cities, where streetlights substitute for stars. God’s word to Abram to count the celestial lights holds less force for urbanites like us, who often can count them quite easily. The moon has lost its army, and we have lost our awe.

Many also feel too enlightened, too scientific, to be much impressed with blue-sky magic and starry spells. The ancients may have heard the sky-clock chime; we have cracked it open and seen the gears. And so, we have heard many intelligent people say something along the lines of Stephen Hawking’s quip: “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies.” Such words corrode wonder.

Perhaps most of us, however, face a larger foe: distraction. We are, in the main, a hurrying and scurrying people, a buying and selling people, a screened and headphoned people, and we have neither time nor interest to consider the sky. We may catch a billow of cloud reflected on the screen, but such heavenly reminders rarely raise us in self-forgetful, still-thumbed worship. I, for one, often spend more time looking at the weather app than the weather.

“I, for one, often spend more time looking at the weather app than the weather.”

But even if we were untethered from our pocket portals, who has the time to walk at the pace of clouds? As children, we could spare a few moments to lie upon the grass and spot animals above, but no longer. Now we have places to go, people to see. Now we run through our days, and you can run faster with your head down.

Punching Skylights

In a world like ours, and with roofs like ours, we need to find a way of getting out and looking up. We need to punch some skylights through this plaster. And not simply because a little wonder does wonders for the soul, but also because, for those who know Scripture, the sky reinforces lessons we can hardly live without. What might happen, then, if we made a habit of staring at the blue with Bible in hand?

We might feel, first, a deeper sense of God’s greatness. The biblical writers didn’t need a telescope to know the heavens were huge, nor did they need knowledge of galaxies to feel themselves small — too small for significance, even (Psalm 8:4). The sky, to them, was enormous.

Still, vast as it may be, it was only the finger-work of God (Psalm 8:3), a house far too small to hold him (1 Kings 8:27). The heavens have always been God’s giant throne (Isaiah 66:1); modern astronomy, in telling us the throne is even larger than we thought, simply underlines the greatness of the one who sits upon it. He is “Lord of heaven and earth” (Acts 17:24), outstripping the skies by infinity.

Yet as we start to feel small beneath such greatness, we might also feel a fresh sense of God’s goodness. If he “determines the number of the stars” and “gives to all of them their names,” then no broken heart lies hidden from his sight (Psalm 147:3–4). If the sky rises to unthinkable heights, then God’s steadfast love in Christ must outstretch our small assumptions (Psalm 103:11). And if God upholds the “fixed order” of the heavens without fail, then his faithfulness to his loved ones will never cease, no matter how dark the night or late the dawn (Jeremiah 31:35–36).

For those in Christ, the sky everywhere proclaims that curious mixture of our smallness and our significance. And small but significant people have a wonderful way of walking through this world: humble and happy, self-forgetful and satisfied, lowly and yet, remarkably, loved by the Lord of heaven.

Light of Lights

Most of all, however, the sky offers a big, ever-present reminder of a big, ever-present truth: we are made for God. The sky’s bigness is a sign that we are not the center; its song is a soundtrack of a story not our own. Like small planets to the sun, we orbit God, not he us. And our joy and glory lie in living before him as pervasively as we live beneath the sky.

For one day, this celestial parable will give way to the Person; the sky will not simply sing his glory, but show the Glorious One. The sky, so steady and familiar, will “roll up like a scroll” (Isaiah 34:4), and the lyrics of love written there will give way to the Lord of love.

God sowed this tapestry to be torn. He built this firmament to be broken. He laid the beams of the heavens so that one day they might become the stage for his Son’s return.

One day our Lord will split the sky,The joy or dread of every eye.The sun will fall before his face,The moon will hurry to its place,And every star will see the sightOf heaven’s Glory burning bright.The Morning Star will take his throneAnd, Light of lights, will shine alone.

Look up, then, as one in darkness aching for dawn. Wait at this window like a wife who hears that the war is ended, her husband comes. Befriend this path on which our Lord will soon return. Consider it worthwhile, even every now and then, to stop and hear again the song of the sky.