Being a witness to suffering is suffering itself.
Holding your child down on a hospital bed so that medical professionals can help them doesn’t make the pain easier.
Helping at the site of a car accident leaves you feeling shaken and helpless.
Hearing the wailing of a bereaved spouse, parent, or child echoes through hearts as well as ears and can’t be drowned out by other noise.
We wish we could relieve the pain and suffering of those around us, but the truth is, we can’t.
As a mom, I can bring the cold packs, the band-aids, and the kisses, but I can’t heal wounds. My compassion finds its limits in my humanity.
Curing cancer, banishing injustice, forgiving sin, defeating death- I’d like to see it done, but I know I’m not the one who can do it.
I am just a person after all, ordinary, flawed, limited, mortal, and sinful. If anything, I know I have contributed to the pain and suffering I see around me more than I have helped alleviate it.
Recently, I spoke to a young woman who had been cutting herself, inflicting self-harm to relieve her inner suffering.
“This pain,” she motioned to the gashes on her legs, “eases this pain,” she said, motioning then to her heart.
It’s one of Satan’s most pernicious lies. He did come only to steal, kill, and destroy, and what better way to achieve his ends than to convince us that only more suffering can satisfy suffering- that making ourselves miserable, pouring out our own blood on his altar, will pay the price that the redemption of suffering costs?
Piercing yourself, giving pieces of flesh, and any other sacrificial suffering can’t and won’t make things better for your children, your community, or your world.
You are just as flawed and hopeless as I am. Our blood achieves nothing. However, Satan’s lie has a little grain of truth in it. There is Someone who can redeem suffering by suffering.
He gave His blood for the pain of the people. He is the One who has promised to set all the wrong things right and make all the sad things untrue.
Some call Him the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Another of His names is Prince of Peace, for by His death He made peace between sinful man and a Holy God. He is without sin, and with His wounds we are healed.
His name is Jesus, and He is the Only One Who can Save.
He invites us to come to Him, to be emptied of our sinful selves and stripped of our efforts to take away the pain of the people around us. If we lay it all down, accepting Him as the Only Savior, we admit our need to be saved and our inability to do the saving.
Then, not only does He rescue us, but He promises us life that lasts forever where there will be no suffering, no tears, no death, and no temptation to save our own day.
So, put away the cape. Take up your cross and follow Him. He is a Savior who banishes suffering and death, producing instead glorious Resurrection.
Sarah Dixon Young 