What do you deserve?

Look into your own heart. I've looked into mine. I've had a great deal of suffering in the eighty-three years of my life-- physical suffering and other suffering. It should never have happened, and it has lasted for many years. Yet, as I look back, I know very well that I have never received the punishment that I deserved. God has been easy with me. He has not laid on me burdens that were equal to my failures . If we look into our own souls, I think that we will also come to the same conclusion, for God speaks to us in various ways. As C. S. Lewis put it,” “God whispers to us in our pleasures, he speaks to us in our conscience, and he shouts to us in our pain.” Pain is God's megaphone. And unlike the ripples that are made in a brook or that you see when you throw a stone in a pond, the ripples of pain, instead of going out to distant shores, narrow and narrow and come to a central point where there is less of the outside of the circle and more of the center. Not the ego, but the real person and the real self. And one begins to find oneself alone with God. That is what happens in pain.