pilgrim in progress

In the midst of your struggles do you ever feel like you are all alone? Have you been in a community where someone suffers and not known how to respond? If so, your experience is not out of the ordinary. Saints as old as Job, who some say is the one of the earliest Christian books, have gone through incredible suffering and felt like they have been abandoned by everyone who once loved them. The communities of old have been trying to figure out how to respond since the beginning. 

Job describes how his relatives, close friends, guests, maidservants, his personal servant, his wife, his children, all his intimate friends, and those who he has loved have all turned away from him. 

From what Job shares some have gone silent. Some look at him strangely. Others can’t stand his sight, while a number of them actively turn against him. This is all in the midst of Job experiencing incredible loss and unimaginable suffering. 

This provides us with some helpful commentary on common responses to suffering by both the one suffering and the community of the sufferer:

The Sufferer Often Responds by:

1. Feeling like God has turned against him, providing no justice and no mercy. God is sovereign and His purposes and timing are often a mystery to us. Believing that God is doing this and He is good takes great faith.
2. Feeling like he has been abandoned by all who love him. Whether this is true or not it is often a perceived reality for a person suffering to feel like no one around understands and responds appropriately to their condition.  
3. Desperation for help and relief. This desperation can be motivated by desire for God and Him to act or a desire for relief of pain and discomfort with not much thought of the Lord. Job falls in the first category when he writes, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.” (Job 19:25-26 ESV).
   

The Community of the Sufferer Often Responds with:

1. Uncertainty. Suffering goes against all that is right and perfect in God’s creation. It is evidence that things are still being redeemed. We do not like to be faced with brokenness and when someone brings suffering into our community our first response is often uncertainty. This uncertainty can lead to deeper processing and prayer and then godly response or it can lead to fear and paralysis and simply ignoring the suffering brother/sister. 
2. Fear. When things are taken out of our hands and we realize that we are not in control then a common response is fear. The suffering of someone in our community reminds everyone of this reality. It forces the community to come to terms with their inabilities, their frailty, their finiteness. When our control and comfort are disturbed we often fear what will come. This is the time to recognize that God is in control of all things and for fear to move towards faith. 
3. Denial. Another common response to the suffering of another is to simply deny that it is really that bad. This gives the community an escape from having to deal with the pain and discomfort of being out of control. It gives them an “out” from having to dive into the messy reality of their suffering friend. This response blindly denies the fact that suffering is real and God ordained for His good purposes, as mysterious and difficult as they might be.
4. Rejection. Some who cannot stand being out of control of a situation respond by rejecting God’s purposes in the suffering and/or rejecting the person suffering. This rejection can be motivated by false-theological reasons or simply because they do not want to deal with the pain the suffering brings to the community.

The challenging thing with both these responses by the one suffering and their community is that many times neither party is unaware of how they are responding. Much grace, patience, courage and forgiveness is needed. Pray that the Holy Spirit will enable our communities to become places where we respond to suffering in faith and with love together.