Life with the Crust On

“For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” ~2 Corinthians 1:5

I've heard it more times than I can count: “Do I have to eat the crust?” Pizza, peanut butter and jelly, even waffles (do waffles have crust?). This question is most common among children, though it isn’t unheard of among adults, either. But you know what the problem is with this request… so many nutrients and vitamins are in the crust! It's not a full sandwich without the crust.

Theodore Roosevelt understood this same principle, though he wasn't talking about food. Our 26th President wrote this about his life on a cattle ranch in his autobiography: “I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in those days. It was a fine, healthy life, too; it taught a man self-reliance, hardihood, and the value of instant decision... I enjoyed the life to the full — the life with the crust on.” Roosevelt didn't merely tolerate the hardship of ranch life. He understood that the hardship was the life — inseparable from everything he loved about it.

The Bible commends a life with the crust on, also. In 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul speaks repeatedly of the sufferings he's endured — the theme surfaces in nearly every other chapter. Far from being a minor motif, suffering is central to Paul's theology of the Christian life. Suffering, friends, is the crust of the Christian life. It's the part from which we get many of our spiritual vitamins: hope, endurance, comfort, and a deeper dependence on God, to name just a few.

Notice, though, that Paul never treats suffering as an end in itself. Rather, he pairs it immediately with comfort — “as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” The crust isn't the whole loaf. But you don't get the rest of the loaf's benefit by cutting the crust away. Likewise, a full Christian life isn’t all crust, but we don’t get the benefits of those spiritual vitamins without it. And we must remember, God doesn't send suffering into our lives capriciously, nor does He always remove it because we've asked nicely. He allows it, walks with us through it, and uses it to grow us into the kind of endurance and hope that ease alone could never produce.

So what do we do with this? We stop treating suffering as an intruder in the Christian life and start receiving it as Paul did: as an expected, even valuable, part of a full life in Christ. This doesn't mean manufacturing hardship, nor does it mean pretending suffering doesn't hurt — it clearly did for Paul, and it will for you. It means trusting that God is not wasting your pain, and that the comfort on the other side of it will be worth abundantly more than a crust-free, suffering-free life ever could.

So eat your crust, Christian. It's good for you. And the God who allows it is the same God who, in Christ, abundantly comforts you through it.

Rev. Kyle W. A. Lockhart, Pastor