Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.
~Henri J. M. Nouwen
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.
~ from Romans 8
Oh beloved, it is true. There is so much pain in this world. And somehow we feel like we have to fix it. And somehow we know that we simply cannot.
So, in knowing that we cannot fix the problem, we try to help people avoid the actual circumstances of suffering themselves. Or, we try to help people get out of the suffering they are in. And this is not always wrong.
But most often it is.
What?
Yeah.
We ourselves have gone through suffering – and we know the pain of it is often so seemingly unbearable that we simply cannot comprehend wishing that anyone else should have to go through it. Regardless, we know that the path of suffering we have trod is surely some of the path that has gained us the most purchase towards maturity – and ability to help others.
So then, another danger presents itself to us. We know that people must go through suffering, so the great temptation is to go ahead and pass by them, and just let them go through it alone. For to become entangled with the suffering of another is often messier than being covered with molasses and tied to an anthill. Pain and the sticky hot mess of other people’s lives is so difficult to bear.
Enter Love.
Love is the profound concern for the well-being of others, without regard for whether the person being loved with return that concern. It is something that we do at our expense, with great affection… for the glory of G_d.
Can we see it? Love is the only way through the problem.
Love covers a multitude of sins and flings fear aside. It is with Love that we can come alongside a hurting person and simply enter into their pain with them – and neither obey the impulse to fix the problem, or bolt from the situation.
Love gets us past the knee-jerk reactions that will rise up in us. Love can help clear the mind so that we begin to focus on the longer-term (even eternal) issues at stake in the suffering of another. Love helps us settle down and simply begin to dance in the rhythm and at the speed needed to actually help the person in need.
Love helps us have the courage to actually begin to feel the pain of another and even enter into it that we might simply help bear the burden with them. It is this kind of Love that somehow fulfills the law of our Jesus who has born the greatest of burdens for us.
Love is like the medicine of a good, nutritious meal and warm bed on a cold day. This, as opposed to some patent, snake-oil preparation that really does more harm than good.
Love helps us past the greatest obstacle too. For we know that if we enter deeply into the suffering of another, we may begin to open up the gashes and gaping wounds of our own past. For we often feel barely put back together ourselves – and fear that we too may come apart in becoming compassionate to another. And it is Love – and only Love – that can get us beyond this. For again, Love is that which actually holds Him together in Eternal Trinity. It is a force beyond infinite. It is the wellspring and framework of all other force and motion.
And He is Love. So, said simply, we can actually, really, truly be Jesus with skin on to the person needing that hug or handshake or friendship or sacrifice or listening ear.
How do we do this?
i have no idea.
But this, this fool of a writer does know, He is doing it in us. He is making us like Him. He is giving us the ability to Love like this. We have but to allow it to begin happening in us and through us. And once we begin to drip His Love, the drips become a spray through a crack. And that spray becomes a flood as the dam of our formerly-damned hearts breaks away and simply becomes a spillway of Him into the world.
Oh, how He Love us. Oh, how He enables us to Love others.
Shall we simply proceed beloved? Yeah.
