Suffering Part 1

I cry in movies. There, I said it (or typed it). As I have gotten older, it seems to be getting worse. It is odd when you think about it that movies have the potential to make us at least twice as sad as they could ever make us happy. Think of the movie that makes you the happiest a movie could ever make you and compare that amount of happiness to actual happy moments in your life. No movie could ever hold a candle to it. Yet somehow when I think of the saddest times in life, the end of Toy Story 3 is not that much less sad. Sure, the length and possibly the depth is not as strong, but in that moment in Armageddon when Bruce Willis pushes Ben Affleck back on the ship, I am truly sad. Not even a "oh that is so bad for them" kind of sad, for whatever reason while sitting on the couch watching thousands of little pixels change colors on a screen describing a story someone just dreamed up one day, I can feel real, true sadness.

There is something communicable about suffering. More so than any other emotion. When someone tells you about some type of suffering they are going through or when you see images on the news of hurricanes, tsunamis, or tornadoes, you can often feel their pain in your chest. Why is suffering like this? Why can humans pass it from one to another? Why do we connect with each other over suffering?

I love it in the book of Galatians where it says to "bear one another's burdens." It seems to be one of the more beautiful and poetic verses in the New Testament. The imagery in my mind is of one man trying to lift something on his shoulders, but when he realizes that he is incapable of doing it on his own, someone else comes by and slides their shoulder under the load and the two stand up together. The passage recognizes two extremely crucial things.

First, this passage shows that the world is simply too much for any one person to bear alone. Even at the very beginning, God said that it was not good for man to be alone and so he made Eve, the "help-mate." I know typically this passage is used as reasoning behind a man finding a good woman, but I think that above an beyond that, this shows our human need to be helped by others and to help as we are able. Remember, everything in the Garden of Eden was perfect. What could Adam have possibly needed help with? Regardless, after the fall, we see that the ground no longer just spit out food for them, there was to be pain, and there was to be death. Thus, suffering was introduced into the world. The only consolation was that Adam and Eve had each other to help to bear the load of this heavy world.

Secondly, this passage shows that we can somehow take on each other's suffering. I think that this is why suffering is so communicable. We were designed to see suffering in others and and take it on ourselves. I remember that I once spoke with a student who was going through some pretty heavy stuff, the type of stuff that no teenager should have to go through. As I listened and prayed with him and realized that as the night went on, his pain became my pain and I suffered with him. I came home that night and wept as if it was all happening to me.

I don't think that his suffering lessened as I took some of it on or that the more I cried, the less he would. I do know that the act of listening, caring, praying, and of taking on his suffering as my own did help him to bear the load in some small way.

This is never a formulaic act. You can't just sit and listen or help someone who is in trouble and chalk it up to bearing someone's burden, but when you listen, help, give, serve, and care for your fellow man out of the love in your heart given to you by Jesus, the world is made just a  little lighter for everyone you meet. Look for someone's burden to bear today.