Have Compassion during Trouble!

I have been reading an amazing book called, Side by Side by: Edward T. Welch. It has been an amazing book that has encouraged me. But one of my favorite chapter is a chapter called: Have Compassion during Trouble. It gave me a new insight and I thought I would share the chapter with you too. I hope you enjoy Edward T. Welch's words. :)

Have Compassion during Trouble

"We move toward others.

• We greet them
• We have short but meaningful conversations. 
• We gradually discover what is important to them.
• We being to pray for them.
• We see the good. We like them. We enjoy them. 
• WE have longer conversations. 
• We continue to pray for them. 

Those ordinary steps are reminders of how to be a friend rather than  profound insights about helping. We all can do them. They are east and ordinary.

The risk is that their very ordinariness might cause us to judge them as second-rate ways to care for one another. But the truth is that following these steps is powerful enough to reach into our souls. When people have practiced just one or two of these steps on us, they have left their mark. That's because every step has the imprint of Jesus, so you can be sure that each one will be fruitful. 

Now notice how relationships naturally progress from there. 

When you follow what is important to someone, that path will take you to the primary struggles of life: suffering and sin. Suffering is the trouble that comes at us. Sin is the trouble that comes out of us. In the next few chapters the goal is to draw from Scripture some ways that God speaks to both of these daily troubles so that we can speak to them too. 

A person's struggle with sin might take precedent and become the focus of our conversation. If someone confides in you about an indulgence in porn or cruel anger, it will grab your attention. But even there, we might talk about the hard things that preceded the specific sin before we focus on the sin itself. WE typically talk about our hardships with each other before we talk about our sin. 

Compassion

'We will never be the same. We always knew that losing a child was one of the most severe blows, and it has been worse than we could have imagined, but God has given us enough grace to get through each day.'

Their thirty-year-old son had died in a motorcycle accident only two months earlier. It was nothing reckless, no drugs or alcohol. A lone deer had wandered into the road. 

In the face of such news we must do something. The pain we hear is rightly answered with a compassionate response. That means we love those who suffer to the point that we are affected by their hardships. In a sense, compassion is enjoyment's companion. We enjoy the good things in someone and have compassion during the hard things. 

Compassion Grieves with Those Who Grieve

No blank looks, no change of topic. When we hear the hardships of those we love, we find them a place in our heart such that we too are not quite the same. 'Oh, I am so sorry. This is so hard and painful. It tears away at me to hear about this' -- those words might seem dramatic or extreme, but they are apt words of compassion from a loving friend. 

We search for words to express compassion. Compassion can be expressed in deeds, but overall culture of God's family is expressive. We speak to God and to each other, and we do it often. The wisdom in this is obvious to those who are troubled, because silence is usually interpret as indifference. 

'I am so sorry,' 'I am with you in this' --that's what we want to communicate. 

Compassion Remembers

If we are affected by someone's suffering, we will remember it, which is one of the great gifts that we give to each other. 

A young man's father died, and his local church, as we would expect, loved him well -- invitations to dinner, a high priority on everyone's prayer list, and warm emails, texts, and cards. After a week or two, the generous care began to taper off, also as we would expect. The few people who still asked the young man how he was doing stood out to him as unusually caring. 

A year later, on the anniversary of the father's death, a friend from the church called and left a message: 'I remember that your father died on this day last year. I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you and prayed for you. I prayed that there will be times today when the memories you have of him bless you.'

The young man was stunned. He was changed. He was comforted and encouraged, and he committed to keep others on his heart long term. 

God's premiere self description is 'the compassionate and gracious God' (Ex. 34:6 NIV). This means that both our pain and our prayers affect him, and he has us on his heart. He takes our burden on himself and remembers us. As we imitate our Father, we want to feel the burdens of others too. 

'Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.' (Gal. 6:2)

So we call, email, track down the suffering at church. We have them on our heart, and we want them to know it. 

Say something. Do something. Remember. That is the basic idea. 

What Not to Say

Yet the call to say something does not mean that everything we say is good and helpful. It's important to know what not to say. Sometimes we may be tempted to respond to someone's suffering with thoughtless platitudes. here are three offenders. 

1) Do no day: 'It could be worse.'

Believe it or not, that is only the first half of a hideous comment, for example: 'It could be worse-- imagine if you broke both legs.' 

We have some odd way so f cheering each other up. 

The comment is accurate-- everything could be worse. We suffer and then, along with the suffering, have a comforter who says it could be worse. 

Such a comment is utterly thoughtless. God himself would never say or sanction it. God does not compare our present suffering to anyone else's or to worst-case scenarios. Ever. If we hear friends do this in their own suffering, it does not give us the right to chime in. Instead, it might be a time to warn them. 

'Yes, your suffering might not seem as severe as _____, but God doesn't compare your sufferings to others.'

If we make such comparisons, we might be tempted not to speak of the suffering from our hearts to the Lord because we would consider it whining, which it certainly is not. 

So even though things could be worse, that is never an appropriate thing to say to others or to let others say about their situation. God is not dismissive of our hardship, and neither should we be. 

2) Do not say: 'What is God teaching you through this?' 

Or, 'God will work this together for good.' 

Those platitudes are biblical in that God does teach us in our suffering, and he is working all things together for good (Rom. 8:28). We agree with C.S. Lewis when he writes that pain is God's megaphone to arouse a deaf world. But these kinds of comments have hurt so many people; let's agree that we will never say them. 

Consider a few of the possible problems with this and other poorly timed misuses of biblical passages:

• Such responses circumvent compassion. Will you have compassion if someone is being 'taught a lesson'? Not likely.
• Such responses tend to be condescending, as in, 'I wonder when you will finally get it.'
• Such responses suggest that suffering is a solvable riddle. god has something specific in mind, and we have to guess what it is. Welcome to a cosmic game of Twenty Questions, and we'd better get the right answer soon; otherwise, the suffering will continue. 
• Such responses suggest that we have done something to unleash the suffering. 
• Such responses undercut God's call to all suffering people: 'Trust me.'

In our attempts to help, we can over interpret suffering. We search for clues to God's ways, as if suffering were a scavenger hunt. Get to the end, with the right answers, and God will take away the pain. Meanwhile, the quest for answers is misguided from the start and will end badly. Suffering is not an intellectual matter that need answers; it is highly personal: Can I trust him? Does he hear? Suffering is a relational matter, and it is a time to speak honestly to the Lord and remember that the fullest revelation he gives of himself is through Jesus Christ, the suffering servant. Only when we look to Jesus can we know that God's love and our suffering can coexist. 

3) Do not say: ' If you need anything, please call me, anytime.' 

This heads in a better direction; it is not quite a platitude. However, this common and kind comment reveals that we do not really know the person. Sufferers usually don't know what they want or need, and they won't call you. The comment is the equivalent of, 'I've said something nice, now see ya later.' It gives no teal thought to the sufferer's needs and circumstances, and the suffering person knows it. 

Instead we could ask, 'What can I do to help?' 

Or (better) we could consider what needs to be done and do it. 

Wise friends buy more dog food, do the dishes, drop off a meal, cut the grass, babysit the kids, clean the house, give a ride to small group, drop off a note of encouragement and then another and another, help sort out medical bills, and so on. 

Any such acts of love and service make life easier for the suffering person. And a meal is never just a meal; maid service is never merely a timesaver for those served. These acts say to the sufferer, 'I remember you' ; 'I think about you often' ; 'You are not forgotten' ; 'You are on my heart' ; 'I love you.' The time we give to creative strategizing is the power behind such acts. It is unmistakable love that mimics the strategic planning of the truine God's rescue mission. He planned and acted even before we knew our real needs.

The oddity of our clumsy and sometimes hurtful attempts to help is this: we have clear ideas from what has helped us in our suffering, but we do not adopt it when seeking to love others. We do not always speak to other in the way we would like to be spoken to. 

Proceed Humbly and Carefully

Compassion offers some protection from foolish words. When we love others, have entered in their lives, and have been moved and grieved, we stand a good chance of offering words or deeds that encourage. But proceed with care. Job's comforters took their time and seemed to care for him. They were moved by his troubles, but they still said things that were wrong and unhelpful, and even right and unhelpful. 

With this in mind, when we are in the presence of those who are suffering, we walk humbly with them before God. Scripture gives us a number of insights into human suffering, but no insight is exhaustive. The mystery in suffering reminds us that we are still like children who don't fully understand the ways of the Father. 

Humility ask, 'What can I do today that would help you?' Then it might make a few suggestions so that the person doesn't flounder or wonder if you mean it. (Can I watch the kids today? Do you need a ride to your treatment? Do you have plans for dinner?) If the person declines, accept it, but do not end the conversation without an offer to pray. Ask what he needs prayer for and either pray right then or pray later and then follow up the next time you see him. That is compassion.

Our Theology Shapes Our Compassion

We speak foolish or unhelpful comments because we do not always love well, but also we speak them because we misunderstand biblical teaching about suffering. Our beliefs can facilitate compassion or be impediments to it. Here are some common but wrong beliefs: 

• Low-grade suffering is common; you just deal with it. Really bad suffering means you have done something really wrong, and God is displease. 
• We all have hardships, but our good Father will give us the ability to bear it, which means that it won't feel that bad.
• We all have hardships. Christian have them a little less than their pagan neighbors. 
• We can praise our way through it
• Think of those worse off than you and be thankful.

Each one of those beliefs yields well-intended but hurtful words because have the story wrong. It is so important that we get the story of suffering right.

here is one way of telling the story. Suffering reminds us that the world and everything in it, including us, are not quite right. Everything will not be right until Jesus returns and his will is done on earth as it is presently done in heaven. So we are people of hope. We look ahead, yet we also know that Jesus's incarnation changed everything, even now. 

In the Old Testament, suffering and trouble were usually a result of the people's disregard for the Lord. There were exceptions such as Job, who went through the worst of sufferings yet was the best of men, and in that, he pointed to Jesus. But, overall, trouble was the result of people's sin, so we can understand why we might think that good people are trouble-free and bad people are not. 

Then the perfect Son of God suffered with us and for us, and, with his resurrection, which was the Father's approval of the Son's life and death, our understanding of suffering was forever revised. Suffering is part of the Father's plan. For those who follow Jesus, we expect to experience the sufferings that are common to all humanity -- accidents, health crises, pain from broken relationships --  and we expect even a little more because we follow the suffering servant. All our hardships are now ways that we participate in the sufferings of Christ. He suffered with the world; we suffer with it. Our endurance in hardships shows our solidarity with him. 

The Father does indeed mature us through hardships. We notice the wisdom of those who have endured through trials, and we are struck b the immaturity of those who try to keep suffering at bay through drugs, alcohol, porn, or some other self-soothing tactic. but we don't make a one-to-one connection between a particular sin and a particular hardship. Jesus himself matured under hardship; we will too.

As we suffer, our hearts are exposed. We can see where we put our trust: in people, money, pleasure, and power -- or in God. But that is a benefit of suffering, not necessarily the cause. We are tested daily by trouble and hardship, as royal children always are, and we expect there trials to grow faith rather than kill it. 

The belief that is hard to shake is that the Father wants to make our life easier and that he is eager to shield us from the hard things of life. This, of course, is not the case. When we get God's story right, our suffering confirms that we belong to him; it does not mean that he is distant and unresponsive. Suffering is a time when he is most obviously at work, and our spiritual task is to turn to him rather than try to manage our world our own way. Endurance in suffering doesn't grab our attention, but it is a response so important that it will have value that last beyond death. 

Meanwhile, we look ahead to the time when everything will be made right. Christ will return, sin will be vanquished, death and everything connected to it will be dismissed. We will experience bodily resurrection and will live in peace with the triune God and with his people.

Since there are so many other ways to tell the story of suffering, we practice the correct one, read S Scripture's various retellings, and read the accounts of wise people. As we grow in compassion, we need this story so that it can be translated into words. The better we understand it, the better our help will be and the deeper our compassion for those with hardships.

Discussion and Response

1) When have you witnessed compassion?

2) What is your growing list of do's and don'ts with those who are suffering?

3) How do you tell Scripture's story of suffering?"