The following is a guest post by Molly Hanberry

There have been a few instances where I’ve listened to music by my favorite artists and been let down. I’d dismiss the disappointment as unreasonably high expectations on my part or an experiment gone wrong on the part of the artist, and I’d let the music sit and take up space on my hard drive.

Notably, I was not a fan of Sara Bareilles album “The Blessed Unrest”. I love Sara Bareilles, and this was the follow up to what I thought was her best album to date. Although a couple of songs were great, I just did not connect with that album.

But for some reason or other, I found myself listening to it when I was on the opposite side of the world, homesick and lonely. And I connected.

Between the time the album was released and that moment in a fifteen-passenger van in New Zealand, I’d chosen a major that required me to take a lot of difficult classes way outside my wheelhouse. I’d been put in situations where I was surrounded by arrogance and forced to acknowledge much of what I valued was empty. I didn’t have time for many of my favorite things. Friendships fell apart. Maggie’s diagnosis happened.

I’d lost my confidence. So much of what I considered my identity had been stripped away. In my head, I knew that’s what God does when He’s working in our lives. In reality, it was not a fun place to be.

I didn’t suddenly connect with an album I’d formerly disliked because now I was listening to it driving through some of the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen. The change of scenery didn’t make the words mean more. The change in me did.

The experiences I’d lived through since I’d first listened to those songs had deepened my understanding and allowed me to see something I hadn’t been able to see before.

Have you ever wondered why so many of the great artists throughout history have led such depressing lives? It seems like tragedy seeks them out. Like talent and happiness can’t coexist. Personally, I think they became great artists because they suffered.

I could talk for hours about the connection between Christians and art, and I’ve read some incredible books on the topic. In For the Beauty of the Church, David O. Taylor states, “Art is our human response to what we see as beautiful.”

There is beauty in suffering, in the stripping away of the old to make room for the new. In the broken being made whole again. In the promise that nothing is wasted. Suffering and art echo the Gospel. Perfection, sin, brokenness, death, hope, Salvation.

God allows us to suffer. He allows us to face the consequences of living in a broken world. But in the end, it makes us grow. It brings us to a deeper understanding of Him. It makes us more fit for an eternity in his presence, an eternity without suffering. It brings us a little bit closer to wholeness.

“And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” –Aeschylus 

I love finding music, books, movies, or other art that I connect with instantly. Over the last five years, there have been so many moments when I’ve turned up the music in my car, picked up a certain book, or turned on a movie and felt like it was meant just for me in that moment.

That feeling of being known and understood, of not being alone in that moment… that’s part of the reflection of “what we see as beautiful“. God may leave us in difficult or painful circumstances, but He never leaves us.