3 Things You Can't Avoid
…and where your hope can be found in the midst of them.
My daughter, Brooklyn came from college for a few days of rest and mama’s cooking. I’m always up for some good food and a nice nap, so after stuffing our bellies with our favorite foods, we snuggled down on the couch and turned on something we knew the rest of the family might object to watching if they were with us. We chose Stutz, Jonah Hill’s new documentary that focuses on the therapist he says changed his life.
The documentary begins with the fundamental reality that every human will experience the following things:
Pain (Suffering & Grief)
Uncertainty
Constant Work
When Stutz outlined these three things I thought, “Well, there goes our fun girl’s night!”
I’m acutely familiar with pain, uncertainty, and constant work, and the reminder of their active role in my life rained on my parade.
Yet, these realities are unavoidable. They are common to us all.
“All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.” - Pope Paul VI
Common, yet unique
We cannot escape struggle, uncertainty, and brokenness. We live a life of faith (things that are hoped for, but not seen) and our hardships in life reveal something about who we are. Our suffering and pain are not just unwelcome interruptions, they create an individuality of brokenness for each of us.
You see, the way that I am broken, tells you something unique about me, and the way you are broken tells me something unique about you. Our brokenness is always lived and experienced as highly personal, intimate, and unique. In fact, I am convinced that each human being suffers in a way no other human being suffers. Yes, we can make comparisons, share our pain with others, and help others along in theirs, but our pain is so deeply personal, that comparing them never brings true comfort.
Our brokenness does not define us, but it is truly our own.
“She could never go back and make some of the details pretty. All she could do was move forward and make the whole beautiful.” -Terri St. Cloud
How to get through tough moments
Pain, suffering, and grief are thorns that prick our hearts in the deepest of ways.
Thorns push us to need God, and they can either paralyze or propel us forward.
This truth reminds me of the story of the Woman with the Issue of Blood in the Bible. This poor woman suffered continuous bleeding for 12 years and this bleeding made her an outcast and ritually unclean. She was untouchable, isolated, unwelcome, and unable to worship with her community for over a decade. The Bible also tells us that “she had suffered greatly; and although she spent all her money on her medical care, she had only gotten worse.”
She was in physical, emotional, relational, financial, and spiritual pain.
The thorns she endured touched every part of her well-being.
What was her response?
After 12 years of suffering, she gathered up hope and courage, and she allowed her pain to propel her forward. She could have easily thrown in the towel and allowed her pain to paralyze and overcome her, but instead, she pushed through the crowd to get to Jesus. As soon as her fingers brushed His cloak, the bleeding stopped and she could feel that she was whole again.
Her movement activated her miracle.
And Jesus healed and restored everything pain and suffering had destroyed.
Just as the cold draws us closer to a nice warm fire, may your pain drive you closer to God where you can receive mercy’s kiss and the strength you urgently need to push through.
Jesus knows.
If suffering, uncertainty, and constant work are realities known by all humans, then they were most certainly known and experienced by Jesus, as He was fully man, but also fully God.
“15 For Jesus is not some high priest who has no sympathy for our weaknesses and flaws. He has already been tested in every way that we are tested; but He emerged victorious, without failing God. 16 So let us step boldly to the throne of grace, where we can find mercy and grace to help when we need it most.” Hebrews 4:15-16 (VOICE)
What did Jesus know of pain, suffering, and grief?
Isaiah 53:3 says Jesus was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” We read in John 11 that He stood by the tomb of His dear friend Lazarus and wept. He allowed the emotional part of Himself to be touched by death. He knew that He was about to raise Lazareth from the dead (see John 11:15), yet He felt Mary and Martha’s sorrow. He entered into the deep, deep pain of the moment and experienced it with them.
Jesus’ world was personally rocked by grief long before that moment when His own earthly father, Joseph died. We don’t know how old Jesus was because the Bible doesn’t provide us with those details. There’s a silence in the story, much like the silence that can be felt when there’s an empty place at dinner or a holiday that’s dashed by loss. The details don’t change the reality, Jesus personally felt the sting of death, and at that moment, He became the head of the house with the weight of His whole family on His shoulders. Hello, pain, uncertainty, and constant work!
He felt the sting of death again when His cousin, John the Baptist, was brutally beheaded by a political coward. When Jesus heard the news, he tried to get away by Himself to pray and grieve, but the crowds of hurting and needy people wouldn’t let Him. They followed Him, asking for miracles, healing, and teaching.
And His reaction?
Even in His personal heartbreak, Jesus turned to the crowds that followed Him and saw them with radical compassion.
In Latin, the word, “compassion” means to “co-suffer.” Even in His own suffering, Jesus relieved other people’s suffering. His love was greater than His own experience of loss, pain, uncertainty, constant demands & work, and He miraculously healed and fed 5,000 hurting and hungry souls on that very day.
This is His response toward us as well.
When we push through our pain and doubts to get to Him, He will not only be found, He will give us what we need most.
Jesus co-suffers with His children.
We are scarred, broken, and hurting, and so was Jesus. He suffers with us, strengthening, comforting, and even carrying us through it whatever life throws at us. All of the pain, uncertainty, and constant work we experience purposefully invites us to lean into God instead of trying to stand on our own two feet and in our own strength. And He will not leave us alone in our pain. He will not abandon or reject us. Our magnificent King-Priest understands and is with us.
If we are people of hope, then we must be people who refuse to allow our suffering to consume us. Let us instead be consumed by God in our suffering.
Entrust your wounded and weary hearts to the Divine Healer today.
“Restorer of broken hearts, when sorrow empties joy from my life and situations bring unforeseen bleakness, wrap your arms of tender hope around the wounded edges of my hurt. Urge my grief to move toward healing.
Amen.” Joyce Rupp
Continue to unpack this message.
Click the button below to listen to, Son of Suffering by Matt Redman