In the final month of my last pregnancy, something appeared in Dear Abby that has stuck with me. The column had apparently been involved in a series of letters about the relative suffering of men versus women. Abby said that, while it was true women went through labor and delivery, the suffering made sense in light of the fact that you got to keep the baby. Here I was, I looking like the Goodyear blimp. Suddenly it made sense because I got to keep the baby! Paul takes a similar position on Christian suffering in Romans. Humans can put up with a lot, if they know there is meaning to what you’re going through.

The problem with today’s text is that I swing between cynicism and Pollyanna. Listen to how the NRSV puts it. It’s Paul speaking. “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” On the one hand, I want to say, “Don’t give me that no-pain-no-gain stuff! Pain hurts! No pain, no pain!” But then I have to admit, “Why am I whining? There are lots of people who hurt worse than me.” There doesn’t seem to be a lot of integrity in either position, but there also doesn’t seem to be a middle ground that makes sense. My uncle used to say, “You’re born crying, and when you’ve cried enough you die.” I don’t know if that’s cynical, realistic, or just plain sad. We’ve got to deal with the question of pain with more intellectual vigor, if not downright painful truth-telling.

My spiritual director suggests a spiral. If things look familiar, or if it seems that I’m reworking the same question, it’s not that I have to keep learning the same thing over and over, but that I keep returning to the really important questions, like a spiral would. Hopefully, I am reaching a deeper understanding of God’s grace with each go-around —even if the grace seems more severe.

My question this summer has been about “home,” probably because I started out the summer with a trip back to Minnesota. Since I left home 32 years ago, I’ve lived in 16 houses in 7 cities in 3 states, so calling it “going home” is ridiculous. Part of the trip included a visit to the cabin in Northern Minnesota that has been in my family for 5 generations. I found myself overwhelmed with sadness, mourning in a brand new way the 1988 deaths of my mother and my marriage. I had come to a new place in that particular spiral. Even as I realized how much I had missed by 30-plus years of “not home,” if I moved back, it would never be “home.” I kept hearing that old gospel song, “This land is not my own, I’m just a-passin’ through. . . .”

So, this is not just about me. Even if you never moved away from the family farm, you, too, are not “at home.” In the NRSV, Paul says in today’s passage that “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves . . . groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” The Message elaborates on Paul’s metaphor of labor pain. This is how it reads: “The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs.” Peterson is not playing fast-and-loose with the text. He’s making the hope of our expectancy more noticeable. And hope is the whole point. Hope is what gives our suffering meaning.

Sometimes newspapers or periodicals print do-it-yourself stress tests. There’s a list of life experiences, each with a different numerical weight value assigned to it, which you’re supposed to check if you’ve had that life experience within the past 12 months. Then you add up the scores. Good things as well as bad things cause “stress.” Typical things on the list are death of a loved one, personal injury or illness, new job, relocation, unemployment, house mortgage over $100,000, remodeling your home, Christmas, a new baby, speeding ticket. You get the picture. I took one of those tests at the Summer Conference this year, and I barely registered above room temperature. Almost no stress at all. If life for me in Oregon were less stressful, you’d have to carry me in a bucket so I didn’t flow downhill. There was a time in my life, though, when my stress values were quadruple the number assigned for “you’re looking for a heart attack.” During that time, I realized, the stress was bearable because there was a community of believers around me, pointing out the meaning in my suffering. They regularly read to me the words of Romans 8, reminding me that Mother Nature herself was suffering in labor. They pointed to the most hopeful thing of all: God was using the suffering to transform me.

Do you remember the cartoon “Calvin and Hobbes”? Not the 16th century Reformed theologian. I mean the little boy (Calvin) whose stuffed tiger (Hobbes) would come to life when grownups weren’t looking. They used an innocent-looking cardboard box “Transmogrifier” to turn ordinary household items into fantastic, absurd, tightly-wound instruments of their imaginations. “Transmogrify” describes perfectly what God is doing with and for us when the suffering in our lives goes off the scale.

Three things about pain-as-God’s-transmogrifier, all three justified by theology, so bear with me. First, pain is a consequence of being human, living in the here-and-now. It’s the old, “Gravity: it’s not just a suggestion, it’s the law.” Pain is a consequence of sin. Not a punishment, but a consequence. If you keep telling God “I can do this on my own!” God is going to believe you. If all your decisions are made without consulting the Creator, the Creator is going to have a hard time putting in a word of advice.

Second, pain in this life reminds us that this is not the end of the story for us. We aren’t “at home” here. That’s where Paul says in The Message, “These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting [experiencing pain in the here-and-now] does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother.” Separation from loved ones, relationships with our children that aren’t all we wish they could be, disappointments in spouses, being turned down for a job or school program: none of them are the end of the story. God isn’t finished with us yet and is dying to use these experiences for our transformation—if we let God.

The third thing regarding pain-as-God’s-transmogrifier. We are adopted into God’s family, so that means that the world’s rebellion against God is also directed toward us. “World” means everything that is stuck in the self-idolatry of life only in the here-and-now. That self-idolatry is called “sin.” When Christians serve their adopted parent, God, they know God’s plan includes more than the here-and-now. The part of creation still stuck there directs its rebellion towards the part of God that can be seen in the here-and-now. Us. For example, a Christian or a church that refuses to invest its money or endowment funds in tobacco or alcohol companies can find its interests blocked by those very companies. This type of suffering is not personal. It’s not about us. It’s about God. Why does the transmogrifier have to hurt? One year at the lake, we watched the dragonfly nymphs come out of the water and transform into dragonflies. It took quite some time for the nymph to crack open a T-shaped opening in its back, then to slowly pull out its curled-up tail and stubby wing-buds. As the almost-fly worked at it, pumping and pushing, tugging and flexing, it grew bigger before our eyes. We wanted so badly to reach in and help tug that tail out of the shell. It would have been quicker and easier on the poor bug. But if we’d done that, the dragonfly would have remained a misshapen, doomed insect, neither dragonfly nor nymph. The struggle was part of its transformation. Sometimes I wonder if God wants to just reach out and help us in our struggles. Toddlers who don’t go through some stumbles don’t learn the dangers of stairs. Teens who don’t experience real consequences for their rebellious actions find some harsh consequences elsewhere. Think, “Sarah Roberts.”

Our affluence is dangerous, because it makes us believe we can count on what we’ve got (not whose we are). It shields us from some natural consequences of our rebellion against God. We believe our own resources can get us through tough times. We think we don’t have to conserve topsoil or drive less, as long as we can afford to pay for more petrochemicals. We drug ourselves with alcohol or shopping or eating. We think that moving to a new location will take away our sense of homelessness. These are tricks to keep us from having to deal with consequences, which ultimately ends up scaring us, so we’ve got to accelerate our addictions. We fear more than anything that we might lose our protection. In our deepest heart of hearts, we have to admit that we don’t deserve either the things that shield us from the consequences of our actions, nor do we believe we deserve the bad things. Friends, this is not an easy thing to say. A little pain in the here-and-now is part of the labor pain we must all experience to reach our ultimate home. And then (good news!) we get to keep the baby!