For the Least of These: The Way of Jesus in the Face of Pain

This post is part of an ongoing series on ministering to people in pain. Click here to see all the posts in this series.

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In Matthew 25, we find a parable of Jesus about the final judgment. He describes the King separating his own (the sheep) from those doomed to judgment (the goats). As he invites the "sheep" into his Kingdom, their inheritance, he says this, "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." They are clearly confused. When had they done this? And the King replies, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

Here we see Jesus' expectations clearly expressed: His disciples, those who follow Him and have surrendered their lives to Him, will naturally bear the fruit of compassion. We see this in his parables - and in an observation of His life. In His earthly ministry, Jesus repeatedly reaches with compassion into places of physical and emotional pain, loss of dignity, shame, vulnerability, and desperation. He stops and sees, he listens, he loves, he responds.

I believe our response of compassion applies to those who are emotionally vulnerable, just as it applies to those who are physically vulnerable in the parable above. It isn't hard to find pain in our world - the pain of loss or violence, of broken relationships, broken bodies, broken minds, of exploitation or injustice, of shattered dreams or distorted self-image. Pain's faces are no strangers to us.

When our lives intersect with someone in the throes of pain, we can, as Jesus' disciples, follow His pattern. We stop, we see, we listen, we love, we respond. This has been the purpose of this series - to enable us to do this better.

To minister to those who are suffering is not relegated to the "professionals" or to specified days and times. This ministry is the whole-life, full time work of all Christians, as we model God's grace and become the hands and feet of Jesus to the suffering.

There may be times when this expression of compassion necessitates calling in the aid of someone who has further training and is better equipped to handle the situation. In situations when someone is at risk of harm (from someone or to themselves), it is important to refer them to the appropriate professionals or contact the appropriate authorities.

These referrals ensure the person receives the help they need - but it does not mean our work is finished. We do not disappear. We do not wash our hands of the situation. We remember that our ministry in friendship and community meets needs no paid professional can. Our steady support, concern, and compassion will continue to remain essential through the season of pain and its subsequent healing process.

As we come to the end of our series on ministering to people in pain, I remember the ones who ministered to me during my darkest days. I remember the people who became living, breathing examples of God’s gracious presence with me, who became His love in flesh. 

They let me sit in the bucket chair in the corner of their apartment while I did more staring blankly into space than studying. They let me just be with them, lending their presence, knowing I needed company more than words. 

They got me out of bed when I wanted to disappear into sleep. They walked with me to counseling sessions. They made sure I kept eating. They prayed with me, and for me, and fought for me when I was too weak. They listened as I told them the stories of the fearful silence in the darkness. 

They sat with me in our tiny church as tears pooled in my eyes, slipped down my cheeks, and when I reached the point the tears ran out. They listened with me to the message of grace, of the God who reached down into our brokenness, who suffered, who was making all things new. 

What if my pain had scared them? What if they left when I slipped further into depression and became much less than my best self? What if they complied when I pushed them away, instead of seeing my desperation? What if they’d washed their hands of me once I started seeing a “professional”? What if they’d looked at my tears and said, “Count it all joy”—or listened to my doubts and said, “You need to have more faith”? 

I thank God that this was not my lot. These precious friends stayed with me in the dark until the light slowly dawned again. They didn’t begrudge my tears—they wept over me. They didn’t let me give up—they pushed me to keep doing what I could, to see the ministry I had at my fingertips, even as I felt inadequate. These friends ministered God’s love to me then, and they remind me now of the ways God has been redeeming my pain for His glory. 

What a high calling we have received, my friends - to, as the Church, be the loudest embodiment of God's presence and mission in the world. Our love makes His love visible. May we have His vision to see the broken and bleeding of our world, and may we have His strength and grace to live up to the call to be His hands and feet in this world.

Prayer & Scripture in Suffering

This post is part of an ongoing series on ministering to people in pain. Click here to see all posts in this series.

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When you walk through a season of pain, it does not take long until you begin to receive spiritual advice. Scriptures (often taken out of context) will be sent your direction. The recommendation to “pray more” or “just have faith” is quickly on others’ lips. Sometimes these well-intentioned efforts do more harm than good.

We’ve already talked about what not to say to someone in pain, which includes spiritual platitudes. We’ve also discussed why a theodicy (the answer to "why?") doesn't actually solve our problems. The emphasis so far has been, admittedly, in my friend’s words: “Don’t be a Bible basher.” 

After weeks of discussing how to help people in pain, we’ve finally come full circle - back to the Bible, back to prayer. We come to the question of the role they can - and should - play when someone is in pain. How should we use Scripture as we minister to the suffering? How do we pray, when we find raw hearts, with no words, with only questions and heartache?

Thanks be to God—the Bible is not a book of platitudes and feel-good sayings. It is the word of God to us in all times and places, including our deepest suffering.

In the Bible we see a picture of a God who draws near to the brokenhearted and meets them in their place of weakness. We see a God who came to earth and took on our experience of human suffering. We see our suffering Savior, who understands our pain and can truly empathize with us. We see a God who sees, a God who hears, a God who responds to our cries of desperation. When we’re sharing Scripture with someone in pain (again, within the appropriate relationship and context), we can emphasize these truths that point to our God of compassion.

“When we can find no words to carry our suffering and confusion to God, it is encouraging to find that God himself has provided words for us.”

— Gay Hubbard, More Than an Aspirin

Thanks be to God—the Bible gives us words to pray when we have none. It offers us prayers we can adopt, prayers that model boldly bringing our pain and desperation to God. 

These prayers, of course, are found in the Psalms. We call them “lament Psalms.” We can use them as we pray for people in pain—and we can share them with suffering people as a God-given model for their own prayers. They follow a general pattern (I’m using Gay Hubbard’s language below):

• Protest - This is what is wrong.

• Petition - This is how I want You to fix it.

• Praise - I trust You, even though I don’t see it yet. I remember Your faithfulness in the past, and it gives me hope for the future. I trust You will hear and respond.

When we read some of these Psalms, we're surprised. Then we paraphrase them into our own language, our own circumstance, and we're shocked. We are uncomfortable with how bold they are, with how directly they describe our distress, how boldly they appeal to God for help. We wonder if we can do that, if we're allowed to be so forward.

“We approach God as though He were an elderly, easily-shocked Victorian maiden aunt…we behave as though God were too nice for the raw, powerful, dangerous reality of our human experience.”

— Gay Hubbard, More Than an Aspirin

Miroslav Volf says these Psalms teach us that “rage belongs before God.” So do our questions, our fears, our doubts, and our sorrow. He is not afraid of them. They do not shake Him. The safest and healthiest place to bring them is before Him, directed at Him. This itself is an expression of faith—to bring our deepest, darkest emotions to the Lord.

What do we do with this?

1. When we share Scripture, we can point them to the suffering Savior and the God who draws near in compassion and comfort. We can find hope in His pattern of redeeming the worst and most hopeless of situations into something good. The emphasis is not on "here's this Bible verse, feel better!" but on "He knows, He hears, He came and suffered to remedy this brokenness." This requires sensitivity and discernment to know what to share.

2. We can pray (and encourage others to pray) the lament Psalms. 

• Repeat the words of the Psalm in its translation.

• Paraphrase the Psalm into your own language, related to your situation.

• Write a lament Psalm of your own, using the pattern we see in Scripture (for an example of this see Psalms of Lament by Anne Weems).

Lament Psalm examples: Psalm 6, 10, 13, 17, 22, 25, 30, 31, 69, 73, 86, 88, 102

No Need to Pretend

In a week and a time when I hear from others and myself, "I just don't get it. What are you doing, Lord?", I'm finding comfort from our freedom to come to our Father with our questions and our uncertainties. I'm thankful for the example of Jesus, who comes freely to the Father asking for the cup to pass but still says, with face to the ground, "Thy will be done."

"A father who would not listen to everything his child says would not be a father. He may smile because the child so often has so little sense of proportion, because the child grieves more over a lost screw in his toy train than the destruction of his parental home, because the child has so little understanding of the difference between great and small things, but he listens nevertheless. God does not want only to be “praised;” nor does he want us simply to go on saying “Thy will be done” and all the while, deep down under our own words, be tormenting ourselves because we have our own will and our own cares and troubles and are only suppressing them out of a kind of religious politeness which we associate with piety. Let us not fool ourselves: the Father knows what we are thinking. And so we can let out even our most secret desires. In other words, we should not only praise God; in this petition and intercession there is power and God has promised to listen. So we really do not need to pretend we are anything but what we are."

- Helmut Thielicke, Our Heavenly Father

What Is (And Isn’t) Forgiveness?

This post is part of an ongoing series on ministering to people in pain. Click here to see all the posts in this series.

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As I sit here this morning, I’m thinking of the precious people I know who are hurting today. Their faces parade through my mind as I feel the weight of their pain. Some of them are suffering the pain of life in a broken world, facing aggressive illnesses, sudden death, burying children or parents, waiting for news in hospital rooms. 

Others, though, are walking through pain inflicted by the wrongdoing or carelessness of other people. Thoughtless words of friends that hurt instead of comfort. Infidelity that makes blackened rubble of a marriage. Injustice sanctioned or ignored, innocent lives crushed in the jaws of indifference. Abuse perpetuated by ones who should protect and nourish. Many of us wear the scars. We all have our stories. And somewhere in the healing process, we come to the point we must consider forgiveness. 

For those of us who claim the name Christian, we are a people marked by forgiveness. We believe God, in Jesus Christ on the cross, paid himself the debt we owed. We are forgiven—and, even more, we are welcomed into the family of God, reconciled, once-severed relationship made whole. In the Bible, we are called in no uncertain terms to extend forgiveness to one another, just as we have received undeserved, unmerited forgiveness and mercy.

I will not sugar coat or underestimate the challenge of this calling. It can be incredibly difficult—particularly when the offending party doesn’t repent. 

“Forgiveness is a costly activity. When you cancel a debt, it does not simply disappear. Instead, you absorb a liability someone deserves to pay. Similarly, forgiveness requires that you absorb certain effects of another person’s sins and release the person from liability to punishment.”

- Ken Sande, Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict

Forgiveness is also often misunderstood, and this misunderstanding can lead to more pain, perpetuating guilt, or putting someone in a position for further abuse to occur. When we're ministering to someone in pain, it's important for us to understand what forgiveness is—and isn't—as we encourage the person to pursue it. 

Forgiveness is...

• Canceling a debt

• Giving up the sense “you owe me”

• Giving up the “right” to get even

Forgiveness is not...

• Forgetting

• No consequences

• Pretending unacceptable behavior is acceptable

• Excusing

• No longer feeling pain or grief

• Trust

• Reconciliation

Reconciliation refers to a restored relationship. Part of the beauty of the Gospel is that we are not only forgiven by God but also reconciled. He has not only canceled our debt (forgiveness) but has also restored our relationship (reconciliation). 

In our human relationships, reconciliation should be a goal, if possible, but it isn’t automatic. It is possible to forgive without being reconciled. For example, someone in an abusive relationship may forgive the abuser (not holding the abuse over him, not seeking revenge, not dwelling on it continually, refusing hatred, taking healthy steps to move forward), but she does not have to put herself back into a vulnerable position by remaining in the same level of relationship or trust as before. 

For reconciliation to take place, there must be forgiveness and restored trust. It can only come fully after repentance and a commitment to change—and from there a trusting relationship can be rebuilt. 

This can be described as a two-stage process. 1) We commit to God to forgive, releasing our vengeance and choosing not to dwell on the situation. 2) Then, based on the repentance of the offender, we can exchange forgiveness and rebuild trust and relationship. 

The first “stage” is what we strive for (and I believe what is commanded in the Bible). It sets us free from the bondage of bitterness and revenge. It allows us to move on. It puts us in a position that, if the other person would come to us, asking for forgiveness, we would already be in the place to say, “Yes, I forgive you.” 

Forgiveness is a process, and it takes time. For most of us, it isn’t an isolated one-time event but rather a discipline of continuing to choose forgiveness day-by-day. It’s figuring out how to start over, how to move forward. It’s a continual act of obedience. 

It Is Not Good For Man To Be Alone

I was in a hurry that morning. As I walked through the automatic doors, I pulled a red plastic basket from the stack. It would encourage me to not pick up much beyond the few items I came for. And it would enable me to dodge the other patrons. This store was notorious for shopping cart traffic jams. With only the basket hooked over my arm, I could slip between stopped shopping carts and dart on either side of the center displays to evade oncomers or those obliviously studying the packages on the shelves. I had my tactics down to a system. 

I efficiently maneuvered the store aisles, my strides long and quick. As I rounded the produce corner to check out, the only thing in my basket not on my original list was a package of bacon because who can’t use a little more bacon? The weekend was coming, which meant hot breakfast, and we had a cast iron skillet to season.

The lines were long. I would have to wait. I beelined to the express lane. Twelve items or less. I had five. I lifted the flap of my purse to pull out my phone—at least I could use the time by checking my email. Then I recognized the dark head in front of me. I let the flap fall shut. 

“Well, fancy meeting you here,” I said. 

His head jerked up from the magazine he had been flipping through, and he turned to face me. His face broke into a wide grin. “Well hello there!” The inflection was almost musical. This, I’d learned, was his standard greeting. The level of enthusiasm in his voice could have led me to believe running into me here was the highlight of his day…or maybe week…or life. There was a lot of enthusiasm. He snapped the magazine closed and let it slip back into the rack.

“How ya doin’?” Same musical lilt. It was reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart. “You were on a trip, right?”

I recounted our road tripping adventures from the last week. He told me about his staycation. He was going out to dinner with his cousin that night. Every comment I made got a laugh and a “I like the way you put that.” I couldn’t help but smile. 

Standing there in the grocery store line, catching up with my neighbor, this small town Pennsylvania bred girl felt a little less out of place. Going on a “quick” errand in my childhood hometown often required a little extra buffer time for the random conversations you’d find yourself in. People there made eye contact and struck up conversation much more readily.

As a child, I thought everyone knew my parents—or grandparents—and therefore me. I’d get questions on various facets from my life, and as I was giving the latest update, my eyes would try to memorize any distinctive features so I could ask my mom who they were when I got home. 

The cashier scanned and bagged his groceries while we talked. He paid and thanked the man. 

“See you around,” I said. And I knew I would. It was hard to be a stranger to someone who lived in your building. It was hard to be a stranger to someone that friendly.

After he left, I turned, still smiling, to the cashier. He was short, young, crew-cut. “Are your neighbors that cheerful?”

He made an expression akin to a grimace and rocked his head slightly back and forth. Noncommittal?   

I laughed. “That looks like a polite way of saying no.” 

He paused. “I guess I’d have to know my neighbors to know if they were that nice."

"Touché." 

"I mean, I don't know their names. I don’t even know if I’d recognize them if I walked up on them in the store.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.