Strength from confrontation with darkness.

You are not given human life for the purpose of experiencing ease, although all lives have encountered at some point a measure of comfort. You are provided the gift of life so that you become stronger through your confrontation with darkness, with negative energy. It is only through your experience of being loving that you are truly carried through that darkness. Achieving an ability to be loving in such darkness is only possible by experiencing love as it can be offered, when all around one knows only of darkness, of pain, suffering, loss. It is precisely the experiencing of being loved that is the most effective principle that can govern your response. To be responsive in a way that reflects God’s light, you do what you can do that is loving toward others, and in the experiencing of your acts of being loving, those who suffer experience what it means to be loved. It is through that experiencing that they begin to see their path illuminated in a sense of pure direction being more visible. They are strengthened in their encounter with darkness because they know what it means to be loved.

Such experience on the part of those who suffer certainly does not mean that they are freed of their suffering, but they are strengthened in their suffering, and through that strengthening, there can be a sense of resolution. If one loses all belongings and knows of the love of others, the loss inflicts less pain. The loss has less impact. It is still there. The loss is not obliterated, but the capacity to get through is strengthened.