Perspective in Suffering

Rom 12:12-13 “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.  Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”

A distinguishing characteristic of a Spirit filled Christian is that their daily lives reveal that they are strangers in a strange land and that they have a hope for a better future. Until that time they reflect a joy that comes from knowing that their future is secure. That is why among the fruit of the Holy Spirit are joy and longsuffering.

What does this mean? Are Christians supposed to walk around with a fake smile on their faces all day and pretend that everything is just rosy; of course not.  We experience pain and suffering just as much as the next guy. When I was back in college in the early seventies there was a teenage female Christian artist that just bugged me. All her songs were this sickly sweet “isn’t Jesus and life with Jesus just so wonderful and happy?” To be honest I wanted to slap that silly little grin right off her face. I know, I know, not very Christian of me, but the point is that our daily walk with Christ is often marked by pain and suffering. He didn’t ask us to deny ourselves and pick up our cross for nothing. He didn’t call us to a life of happiness; He called us to a life of service and sacrifice.

Joy on the other hand is not circumstantial. It is not dependent on things going our way. Happiness is dependent on the here and now while joy is focused on the promise of a better tomorrow. That is why in the New Testament our joy is tied to our hope and not to our circumstances.

In fact, as the verse continues it addresses our daily reality by saying that in our pain, in our affliction we have to be patient. God knows that when we are in pain, when we are in the midst of our suffering every minute seems like an eternity. There are people who suffer their entire lives. While in the scope of eternity, even a lifetime of suffering is short by comparison, this is little comfort to those who are experiencing pain. However, knowing that a pain free time is coming, a time filled with joy and happiness; that hope does help in enduring and persevering.

Faithfulness in prayer keeps the lanes of communication with the Father open. He is faithful to answer our prayers and that keeps us going.  It is a lot easier to move in the darkness when you see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.  There may still be a long ways to go, but that light fills us with hope and helps us to endure our present darkness.

Finally, we are called to serve and be hospitable to those in need. It is no coincidence that the Apostle Paul put these sentences in this particular order. While we focus on our own suffering the pain seems almost intolerable, but when we help alleviate someone else’s pain we tend to forget about our own.  There is an old saying “I used to complain about having no shoes until I met a man with no feet.” When I pray with people I always tell them that I will not pray with them for the same thing more than a couple of times unless they go and pray for someone else. We tend to do what I call “navel gazing”. Our eyes are downward looking at ourselves. We focus on our own problems and fail to see the bigger picture. When we serve others and pray for them we get a different perspective. Our eyes are now looking outward and then upward.  Things look a lot different that way.

I still remember a passage from Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place which takes place in a Nazi Concentration Camp after she and her sister were arresting for sheltering Jewish families. They were suffering untold miseries at the hands of the Nazi’s and every day things seemed to go from bad to worse. The anger in Corrie was growing and the straw that broke the camel’s back was when the barracks suffered a lice infestation. Corrie was angry at God that on top of everything else now they had to endure the constant itching and scratching because of the lice. Her sister Betsy took her aside and patiently put things in a different light. She told her that rather than a curse, the lice were actually a blessing from the Lord. Corrie thought she might explode at the thought of considering lice a blessing. Betsy went on to explain that since the infestation started the guards no longer came into the barracks for fear of catching the lice. As a result, inside the barracks, they were free to worship God and not be assaulted by the guards. Thanks to the lice the barracks had now become their sanctuary from the Nazis.

The lice still bite and the pain is real. The sores that come from scratching are as real as they are painful. However, it is easier to endure them when God can show us the bigger picture that includes His mercy and love.