When You Suffer (eBook)

Biblical Keys for Hope and Understanding

Jeff Cavins (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
176 Seiten
Viident (Verlag)
978-1-63582-292-2 (ISBN)

To be human is to suffer-physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In addition to our own suffering, we also encounter the suffering of those around us. While the world of medicine attempts to relieve suffering and the media tries to sell us on a life without pain, only the Church offers the perspective that suffering has meaning. St. John Paul II said that suffering without meaning can lead to despair, but if we can attach meaning to our suffering, we are capable of going through anything. When You Suffer is a refreshing look at the mystery of pain and suffering and how to find meaning and even joy in the midst of it. Jeff Cavins discusses why we suffer and how our suffering can draw us closer to God. He explains that suffering is the greatest opportunity to love as Christ loves and how, by 'offering up' our suffering, we join in Christ's mission to redeem the world.

To be human is to suffer-physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In addition to our own suffering, we also encounter the suffering of those around us. While the world of medicine attempts to relieve suffering and the media tries to sell us on a life without pain, only the Church offers the perspective that suffering has meaning. St. John Paul II said that suffering without meaning can lead to despair, but if we can attach meaning to our suffering, we are capable of going through anything. When You Suffer is a refreshing look at the mystery of pain and suffering and how to find meaning and even joy in the midst of it. Jeff Cavins discusses why we suffer and how our suffering can draw us closer to God. He explains that suffering is the greatest opportunity to love as Christ loves and how, by "e;offering up"e; our suffering, we join in Christ's mission to redeem the world.

Chapter Two

Is There Meaning in My Suffering?

When life seems to be going according to plan, a myriad of unforeseen variables remind us that no life really does go according to a preconceived plan.

When bad things happen to good people, when tragedy strikes, when life throws us a curve, inevitably someone will ask the question, “Why? Why do we suffer?” How do we embrace an all-powerful and all-knowing God when we seem to be open game to the destructive powers of sickness, victims of interpersonal casualties, and finally death?

When these questions capture our thoughts, we are somewhat like the couple walking on the Emmaus Road in Luke 24. They were full of disappointment. They were a disillusioned couple without joy, without hope. For a while at least, they experienced what life would be like with God as they had walked with Christ prior to his crucifixion. Now, with heavy hearts they began to contemplate what the future would be like without Jesus. They were suffering. Proverbs tells us that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12). What is interesting is that they were walking down the road of despair when Jesus joined them, and they began complaining to Jesus about…well, Jesus. They recounted how they had hoped Jesus would redeem them, but instead he had been crucified as a common thief, not the king they envisioned. Unfulfilled expectation regarding Jesus was the source of their “real life” pain and discouragement. The one they were walking with, Jesus, would turn out to be the key to turning their day around, they just needed to have reality explained to them. Doesn’t that describe us on many days, when we don’t feel as though God has been God for us? We need reality explained in a way that makes sense. The emptiness in our lives created by our neediness at every level leaves us with an unbalanced existence. Our time and resources are spent in avoiding suffering at all costs, and we devote little time to deeply contemplating the why or the meaning of suffering.

Just like the two men on Emmaus Road, in our own lives we complain to God about God. I do not understand suffering, Lord. Note what the Lord did when his disciples expressed this moral suffering of the heart, trying to figure out their loss. He began with the Old Testament and explained how the Messiah would enter into his glory through suffering. Jesus addressed their suffering by explaining his suffering. There is a huge lesson we can learn from this: The way to endure our suffering is to understand Christ’s suffering.

Think about the suffering you have endured in your life. Think about what you may be going through right now. When it comes to experiencing a particular type of suffering, there is a direct relationship between how well you actually suffer and finding the meaning in your suffering. In other words, if we cannot attach meaning to our suffering, we run the risk of falling into despair. But if we can attach meaning to our suffering, if there is some value in what we are experiencing, we can endure anything.

Think about it: Nothing in life has meaning unless we attach meaning to it. This is especially true when it comes to language. Words mean nothing unless there is a common understanding and acceptance of the meaning we attach to a word. Take the word ginormous. Between 1948 and 1953 Americans started to blend two words giant and enormous together to communicate anything that was really giant or really enormous. At some point in time ginormous became a good word to communicate the meaning of something really big.1

Think about your own experience. What meaning have you attached to your suffering? Does the suffering you’ve experienced seem futile, just an unfortunate bump in your life journey? Maybe you feel more like that couple on the Emmaus Road. Do some situations make you feel hopeless or despairing? Do you have questions but no answers? There are so many reasons we suffer, and if we are unable to make sense of things, we are tempted to run from reality or self-medicate with alcohol or drugs. But if we can somehow find meaning in our suffering, everything looks different. Everything! That is what this book is about: how we can find meaning in our pain. How our less-than-ideal days on earth can say something really eternal.

Here’s an example I shared with clients when I was a time-management trainer. It’s an adaptation of the Franklin Quest time management training system. Imagine a steel beam one foot high, one foot wide, and twenty-five feet long. If I set that steel beam on the ground and told you I’d give you $100 if you would walk across it, you’d see this as easy money, since the top of the beam would only be twelve inches off the ground. But what if that twenty-five foot beam was two stories up between two buildings and I offered you a thousand dollars to walk across it? Would you do it then? The number of people that would agree to do it would go down dramatically. And if I took that beam and positioned it fifty stories up between two skyscrapers and offered ten million dollars if you would walk across it, only those who either have supernatural balance or no will to live might agree.

But what if I told you that your son or daughter was on the other side of that beam, and you would never see them again unless you walked across it, fifty stories above the ground. Would you walk that beam? In my seminars, almost every hand would go up. Yours probably would, too. Why? Because you suddenly have found a reason for walking across the beam—you’ve attached some meaning to it that just wasn’t there before, even for ten million dollars. You’d walk across that beam to save your child, even if it meant putting yourself in great jeopardy or sudden death. For most people, their family represents a treasure that is worth suffering for if given the opportunity.

But the real question as it relates to this book is not whether you’d be willing to die instantly for someone you love, but whether you would be willing to die slowly for that person. As St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:31, “I die daily.” This can be a startling revelation for many of us. We would do our utmost to rescue a family member from a burning building or the raging sea, even if it meant losing our own life in the process—but dying slowly? Dying daily? That’s something else entirely. I remember when my daughters were born. I felt such an intense love for them that each time I said to myself, “I would die for you.” But the measure of my love was not that one time statement, but whether I would die slowly for them over many years.

In this book, I want to show you that there is meaning in your suffering. Life—real life! Suffering can take on a whole new meaning and all your suffering and discomfort can be seen from a much different perspective. A fascinating exercise is to think about the suffering you may be enduring right now and ask the question, “Does Jesus see this suffering as a waste or an opportunity?” In other words, do you think Jesus attaches meaning to your struggles? The answer is yes! Whether you are talking about giving up your life for a friend or driving to a wedding when you wanted to stay home, you can find meaning that will work for good in your life.

St. John Paul II is a good example of this type of daily dying. He lived with physical suffering and endured it courageously and publicly, right up to the end of his life. Although it would have been far easier to abandon his responsibilities and retreat from the public eye, he chose to demonstrate in a very transparent way what carrying one’s cross daily means.

St. John Paul II was abundantly familiar with suffering. Looking back at his life, we note that he endured moral suffering at the loss of his entire family by the time he was twenty. As a young man Karol Wojtyla’s life was not turning out the way he envisioned. It was less than an ideal life. He endured hard physical labor in stone quarries as a way to escape the Nazi regime. Even after he decided to become a priest, his seminary training was accompanied by the constant threat of government persecution.

Of course, young Karol Wojtyla would eventually be appointed Cardinal of Krakow and then ascend to the papacy in 1978. This courageous young pope who was familiar to theater, this man who knew the meaning of suffering would now stand on a world stage and demonstrate the meaning of both moral and physical suffering.2

The day after his election, John Paul II surprised everyone by leaving the Vatican for the Policlinico Gemelli, to make his first pastoral visit to Rome and Italy. He met with those who were sick with cancer and sat next to a friend, Andrej Maria Deskur, who was suffering from a stroke. It was reported that Cardinal Deskur would joke about being wheelchair bound; he said, “I am like the Coliseum, I’m a ruin, but very popular.”3

Not only was St. John Paul II shot in Rome three years into his papacy, he also suffered physically from Parkinson’s disease. Many will never forget the once vibrant and robust man struggling to stand and speak while looking out...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	1.1.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-10	1-63582-292-0 / 1635822920
ISBN-13	978-1-63582-292-2 / 9781635822922

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