Christians have what theologians call a sacramental view of reality.2 We believe that the stuff of earth carries within it the sacred presence of God. When we find bliss, wonder, or glory, we brush up against a solid reality: God’s own truth, beauty, and goodness. We delight in these things because they participate in God.

Jesus’ yoke is light not because he promises ease or success, but because he promises to bear our burdens with us. He promises to shoulder our load.

We are not the primary protagonist of the earth—or even of our own lives. Each night the revolution of planets, the activity of angels, and the work of God in the world goes on just fine without us. For the Christian, sleep is an embodied way to confess our trust that the work of God does not depend on us.

This prayer has the audacity to ask that the God of the universe would stoop not only to heal us but to care for us, to nurse us in our most unimpressive states. We need God to bring wholeness to our souls, even through the brokenness of our bodies.

unless we make space for grief, we cannot know the depths of the love of God, the healing God wrings from pain, the way grieving yields wisdom, comfort, even joy.

Could these small “warnings from the reaper” not be mere tedium to be endured, the potholes in our well-paved roads of success and autonomy, but instead become a way our bodies tutor us in reality? Can our lungs and toes and wrinkles instruct us in humanity and humility?

The Christian understanding of agency is that all good work is a participation in the very life of God.

Suffering gives us new eyes; it teaches us to see in the dark. And what do we learn to see? Light, hope, joy, even God himself, in new and profound ways.

The suffering need soothing, not just numbing. We need real hope, the kind that can carry us through the night.