William Stuntz has written an extremely moving piece about suffering and faith over at the InterVarsity website. Stuntz suffers from severe chronic pain, and has been thinking long and hard about pain and perseverence.

My Christian friends all pray that the [pain] would go away. For a long time, that was my prayer too. How could it not be? Yet something happened in my spirit after a few hundred of those prayers, not so different from the popping in the base of my back when I tried to change that tire. My spirit popped: I couldn’t bear to keep asking God a question the answer to which would always be “no.”

What do you do when you reach this point—when months and years of prayer result in no relief from suffering? Do you grit your teeth and keep praying for deliverance against the odds? Accept the continued pain as a “no” answer from God and give up? Or is there a better response? Stuntz traces his own spiritual journey through those questions, and it’s an insightful read. (Hat tip: Professor Bainbridge.)