 All of these things help us stay hungry for the bread of heaven, help us stay thirsty for the living water. Suffering keeps waking us up out of any spiritual slumber we might find ourselves in. Suffering is the textbook that keeps teaching us who we really are, that we are not the paragons of virtue that we so would like to think we are. No, we are sinners in need of redemption each and every day. And suffering sandblasts us, strips us bare.