Whither Grumpy Christians...And the Better Option with Pain and Suffering

So I usually have a grumpy day or two after camp--I crash hard after getting over-amped on all that extrovert time combined with the general severe sleep-deprivation. Today, I was grumpy. I would hope that this isn't a permanent posture, but you'd have to check with my wife and kids on that.

But the reality is that there are grumpy Christians. There's grumpy people everywhere, but the real mystery is that there are Christians who are grumpy.

The Scriptures promise that all things must work together for our good. In fact, 1 Peter 4 invites us to rejoice when we suffer because we are participating in the sufferings of Christ so that we might more fully rejoice when he returns again (see vs. 13).

So whither grumpy Christians--what gives?

Grumpiness is generally the fruit of trials or pain that has not been fully dealt with. And it would seem that somewhere in the process of those trials, we have a very small but very important decision to make: what will we do with it?

It seems that there are two ways for us to deal with pain--either we can stew on it or we can submit it to Christ. The former is far easier and what I typically want to do with my grumps. It's more or less what I did for most of my day today.

The latter, however, holds the one true promise of genuine redemption of our pain. All of us will suffer to some degree or another (more on that at a later date). That suffering holds the key to our joy and character or the undermining of them both.

To put it in Peter's terms, we can choose to join our suffering with Christ's suffering and in doing so we find joy in the promise that this suffering must bless us. Or we can choose to suffer apart from Christ--leaving us to deal with it alone and bearing the fruit of that alone-ness: anger, malice, self-pity, self-loathing, uncertainty, fear, resentment, just to name a few.

What might it look like for us to choose to bring our suffering and pain to the cross and have it bear the fruit of joy rather than cling to it with a great deal of covetousness to no apparent gain for our souls? When we step back and look at it clear-eyed, why would we ever choose the way of death?

I hope some day to come back from my two week stint at camp and be able to avoid the now-inevitable grumpy day. But even more so, I am praying that I might learn how to join any and all my pain and trials to the sufferings of Christ...and so look forward to the day when all my experiences will serve to bring me (and those around me) joy.