Separation and all that causes separation is a real thing in our lives. We are one person in one place at one time, struggling for place and survival. Sin may be defined as any separation or anything that separates us from God and His perfect plan. “Me first – me best” is a perfect example. because it puts our needs before everything and everyone else. It is everywhere and in everyone. Even if a person was perfect, an impossibility on this planet, suffering would find and try to swallow that person in its misery.

Proximity is the act of God drawing close and the manifestation of the contrast between perfection/purity and the sin/separation/brokenness I’ve identified as the cause of all suffering. Purity and impurity can’t exist in the same space, so grace, love, and generosity from God, provide for God’s interaction with our brokenness.

Process is the act accepting God and allowing Him to draw us to Himself and develop His life within us. It is a process of transformation and transition that rewires our hearts, priorities, and relationships.

Freedom is one potential outcome of suffering. It is the joy and the hope that hides under the blanket of hardship, pain, and suffering. Choice is the doorway. It opens the door to following ourselves and the substance of this world or following God, the creator. Mankind’s greatest troubles come from making the wrong choice and closing the door.

God, like a parent, would never lead us in the wrong direction or cause us additional harm, no matter how often we, as children, blame Him. He is the one who tells us the uncomfortable and unflattering truth that leads to freedom. Freedom peeks through a door when we are able to go contrary to nature and choose God.

Our freedom is freedom of the soul, not from trouble. We are freed from fear, death, guilt, shame, bitterness, and the limitations of this world, not by our own strength but by His. Our freedom is based in trust for the One who has power over all the most benevolent and horrifying powers we can see and experience on this planet. Humans only pretend to be god or god like, but Jesus is God. Sometimes a person has to come to the end of him/herself, suffering, to look beyond him/herself, and see God, His love and His plan.