Suffering With Christ

Slipping my arms through the straps and then tightening the belt around my waist, I could feel the weight off a weekend’s worth of food, clothes, and camping gear as it settled on my shoulders. 

Less tangible but even weightier was the burden I was carrying in my spirit, a sum accumulated over the course of the past couple of weeks. It wasn’t the pain of my own problems, but rather the pain of many other people who are very dear to me. The hardships of my friends, the suffering of my patients, the brokenness of relationships, the injustices in the world, and the millions of people who are trying to manage all this apart from Christ — it all began to pile up like bad news upon bad news, like struggles upon sadness. 

As I started to walk down the trail into the woods, I knew that I would have to carry this heavy pack for miles over hills and across creeks. But my dad has taught me that backpacks are designed to help you carry weight correctly, and the secret is making the right adjustments to your pack and the way your wear it. So I reached up and behind my shoulders, searching for two smalls straps that I couldn’t actually see while wearing my pack. My fingers reached and grabbed, catching only air.

“Hey,” I called out to a friend walking the trail in front of me. “Do you see a couple of straps back here where I am grabbing?” He reached over and placed one strap into my left hand, then helped my right hand find the one on the other side. These special straps are called “load lifters”. Holding both straps tightly, I snapped tension onto them and pulled them firmly, and the weight of the pack instantly switched from my shoulders to my hips, which instantly makes the pack feel twenty pounds lighter. 

I had been carrying the weight wrong. 

Sometimes we need to make adjustments, and we need our friends to help us see how to do it, to help our hands find the right straps to pull and shift the weight. 

Over the course of that backpacking weekend in the woods where cell phones didn’t work, we passed the hours in long conversations on the trail and around the campfire. Those were the moments when my friends helped me adjust the way I was carrying the weight on my soul. 

We also spent extended time in silence and solitude. Those were the moments that the Lord spoke to me and instructed me how to lay my weighty burdens down at his feet. 

What do I do with all this? I asked the Lord. All this pain, all this suffering? 

The question in life is not about whether we will suffer or not. We will; it is guaranteed. Jesus clearly taught this and then modeled it by his own life and suffering. The question also isn’t about whether God allows/plans suffering or not. In fact, the greatest suffering to ever happen — Christ on the cross — was ordained and destined by God...and then transformed into the very greatest story of redemption. 

The great question in life is not if we suffer or why we suffer but rather how we will respond to the suffering. Will we trust him to continue transforming suffering into redemption?

God entrusts us with suffering. How will we carry the weight?

As I walked the long trail and contemplated these things in the presence of the Lord, I came to the conclusion that (since suffering is a guarantee) there are essentially two ways to suffer: we can either suffer with Christ or without him. 

One path is empty and painful, the other path is full of hope and presence. 

I know which path I want to walk, and I want to bring as many people on that trail with me, backpacks and all. So I make it my aim to bring Christ back into the suffering, to suffer with him instead of without him, to share in his sufferings and to let him walk with me in mine, and to encourage people to walk their paths of suffering with the only one who can really help them. 

For the followers of Jesus, suffering should not shake us up one bit. We of all people should understand. We of all people should expect it. And we should be able to explain it without too much hesitation or uncertainty — because we understand that we live in a fallen world broken by sin. We see that the suffering of this present age is visible evidence of the spiritual war waging around us. And we already know the outcome of this war because of what Jesus accomplished when he suffered on the cross and burst out of the grave. He promised to return and establish a kingdom where literally everything that is wrong will be made right. It will be an everlasting kingdom where truth and mercy and justice reign, where there will be no more death or suffering, no more tears or pain. 

Knowing Jesus now brings us into that kingdom, which is here already but also not yet. 

The suffering and brokenness of our world and the present peace of the kingdom of Christ — both realities coexist for now until the one is defeated forever and sin and suffering are swallowed up in the love of God and the eternal reign of Christ. This is the hope and the message to which we cling and of which we proclaim. 

I took my pack off at the end of a long day of hiking and stretched out in my hammock, delighting in the relaxation because I had carried the weight well. I was stronger because of it. I sat around the campfire with my friends who had walked the trail with me, and I slept so well because I was that good kind of tired - the kind of good tired that comes from working hard and seeing how far you have come. 

When I get to heaven, I want to sit around a campfire with a bunch of friends who have finally taken their packs off. And we will rest well because we have traveled well. And the best part of it will be that Jesus is there, telling trail stories of how he walked with us the whole way.