...and He had compassion on them

“Your hope dangling by a string, I’ll share in your suffering to make you well…”

In the past few months, I’ve been more and more keenly aware of the ways that people I love are suffering. Not because of a unifying event or some particular trend of terrible things happening – just the struggles of ordinary life. And even though seeing someone that I love in pain is one of the most painful things I know, it has also given me hope and strengthened my love.

It’s so easy to live life at the surface and to think that the measure of my worth is my success – that I have to fix all of my problems and only then can I really live life, have real relationships, pursue the things I want. A heightened awareness of the crosses that everyone carries clarifies my vision, both of myself and of the world around me, and it deepens my ability to love.

We are all broken, hurting, in need of healing. If we live on our own strength, that hurting and weakness isolates us and keeps us from being who we are. If we follow the crucified King, the hurting and the weakness is redeemed and transformed.

When I trust my wounds and weaknesses to Him, amazing things begin to happen. First, I realize that He is actually with me in my suffering. (For a mind-blowing image of what it looks like that God cares about your suffering – pray with Psalm 18). I realize that He took on every conceivable human suffering in His passion, first to redeem us, but also so that, no matter what it is we’re going through, we don’t have to go through it alone. As He shows me more and more how much He loves me, I am more and more able to trust Him and to rely on His strength instead of my ridiculous weakness. And as I trust Him more and more, I give Him permission to work in my heart and He brings growth and abundant goodness out of my brokenness and weakness.

This is the most abundant mercy that I can conceive of – that our brokenness is redeemed and becomes the place where He encounters, loves, and heals us – but it doesn’t even stop there. By His power, suffering also becomes a way to love each other – to have mutual compassion, to be with each other in hurt. And, having been through the darkness together, our love becomes radically deeper and realer, carrying over into all the details of daily life. We are able to support each other, even though we are broken ourselves, in the pursuit of virtue and the seeking to know, love, and serve our King better. Our relationships begin to take on that “complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, that every man’s heart desires.”†

I know this is easier said than done, and I honestly feel like I forget it every five seconds and Christ has teach me again. But He always does remind me, and every time I learn it again, I learn it in a new and deeper way. Slowly but surely, I hope more profoundly, and know more confidently that I am not alone.