In her book A Place of Healing, Joni Eareckson Tada reflects on how we tend to worry that the cares, troubles, and afflictions of life will wear us down, dulling our joy, diluting our hope, and robbing us of the radiance we once experienced as believers. "In fact," writes Tada, "it may be the very opposite. It isn't the hurts, blows, and bruises that rob us of the freshness of Christ's beauty in our lives. More likely, it is careless ease, empty pride, earthly preoccupations, and too much prosperity that will put layers of dirty films over our souls. She then illustrates the point:

I'll never forget years ago when I had the chance to visit Notre Dame Cathedral while I was in Paris. There it was, almost one thousand years old, standing there so huge and…black. I had never seen such a dirty cathedral! After hundreds of years of soot, dust, and smoke, Notre Dame was covered in layers of black grime. It was even difficult to make out the beautiful carvings and details on the exterior. But then the grand old cathedral went though a year-long restoration. Scaffolding was erected, and the entire exterior was sandblasted. I was stunned when I saw a recent photograph of the cathedral. It was beautiful—and so very different from the way I remembered it. … The ancient stones glowed bright and golden. You could see details on carvings that hadn't been visible in decades. It was like a different cathedral. What a wonder a bit of sandblasting can accomplish. …

When I use the word "sandblasting"—and when I think of how that process changed that cathedral in Paris—I can't help but consider that way God uses suffering to sandblast you and me. There's nothing like real hardships to strip off the veneer in which you and I so carefully cloak ourselves. Heartache and physical pain reach below the superficial, surface places of our lives, stripping away years of accumulated indifference and neglect. When pain and problems press up against a holy God, suffering can't help but strip away years of dirt. Affliction has a way of jackhammering our character, shaking us up and loosening our grip on everything we hold tightly. But the beauty of being stripped down to the basics, sandblasted until we reach a place where we fell empty and helpless, is that God can fill us up with himself. When pride and pettiness have been removed, God can fill us with "Christ in you, the hope of glory."