Colossians 1:24 · World English Bible
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the assembly,
The same pain crushes a person when it is only theirs and steadies them the moment it is spent for someone else. Pain takes its entire emotional charge from the meaning assigned to it, and a man who assigns his to the strength of a church he has never met has changed the charge without touching the chains.
From the Self-Help reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SELF-HELP
The same pain crushes a person when it is only theirs and steadies them the moment it is spent for someone else.
Pain takes its entire emotional charge from the meaning assigned to it, and a man who assigns his to the strength of a church he has never met has changed the charge without touching the chains. Meaning sets the state, the state sets the emotion, and the emotion decides whether the same body reads ruin or work worth doing.
The joy is not denial. Affliction joined to Christ's own and spent on his body has a destination, and pain with a destination can be carried at a weight private pain cannot. Held alone, it gets narrated instead of spent, and the narrating enlarges it while producing nothing.
Self-Help lens
Who is on the other side of what I am going through, and does that change how heavy it feels?
What happens to you is not in your hands, but what the thing means is. Pain joined to a purpose you have chosen is carried differently than pain you only suffer.
To take on hardship willingly for the sake of others transforms it. The same difficulty that isolates a person when it is private becomes bearable when it is offered.
The reed cries because it was cut from the reed bed. The wound is the very thing that gives it a voice others can hear.
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Self-Help