Radiance in Suffering
"Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but he Lord delivers him out of them all."
Psalm 34:19 promises suffering. Afflictions are a guarantee. In a place ranked the seventh least developed nation in the world, where over half the population cannot read or write, where families live on less than $2 a day, where people die of preventable diseases because they do not have access to the most basic medical care, where mothers are too malnourished themselves to breastfeed their own babies, where girls and boys grow up without parents because of maternal mortality and the corruption of gold mines, where young women are exploited for sex, where Christians are persectuted and cast out of their own communities and families for believing in Jesus and abandoning their idols...people understand that suffering is a guarantee. That's not the question.
The question is how we handle it.
Just a few verses before the one written above, Psalm 34:5 teaches that the way of a Christ-follower is not only a way of suffering.
"Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed."
The way of a Christ-follower is not only a way of suffering; it is also a way of radiant joy. The two mix and mingle together, even dance hand in hand.
There is a stark contrast between believers in God and the people of the world by the way that they suffer. When the people of the world suffer, they suffer with shame. When Christians suffer, they suffer with joy.
How can this be? It only makes sense because of the resurrected life we have in Jesus, the hope of heaven after we die, the relationship we have with the God of the universe who is a perfect father, and the reason he gives us for living. Such is a heavenly, holy hope that no amount of earthly suffering could ever overcome it.
I watched Rebeca hold baby Prisca. At eight months old, she has known more suffering than I have in my entire lifetime. Born to a teenage mother who had to drop out of school at a critical time (equivalent to the senior year) to take care of a baby. She was born with a cleft palate and tongue tie, making it hard for her to suckle and swallow so she quickly became malnourished and her mother's milk dried up. She was enrolled in the infants in distress program, but after a few months, she quit coming because her mother no longer had enough money to pay for milk at about $18 a month. She had been using her inheritance, her deceased father's social security checks every three months, to buy the milk for her baby...until that ran out. Her father was gone, her mother is a widow with no income, and her husband is totally uninterested in helping her. He doesn't even live with her, hardly visits, and only rarely gives help. One time he sent her $10 to buy a new outfit, but she couldn't bring herself to buy something for herself when she couldn't even feed her baby. She bought a half a month's supply of milk instead.
It has been four months since Prisca has had any milk.
Rebeca held baby Prisca, nothing but skin and bones, in her arms. She looked like a malnourished newborn; one would never guess she was eight-months old. Every single one of her ribs jutted out, her little arms and legs had no muscle, her head was twice too big for her body, and her skin clung to her but remained tight when pinched...a sign of dehydration. She carried the burden of poverty and abandonment in her tiny frame, but she also carried an undeniable strength that has sustained her fragile life against all odds.
"God must really want you!" Rebeca said to her with wide eyes and a big smile in her best baby-talk voice. We all knew it was a miracle that she was even alive. She had gone four months with no milk, only a light flour-based cereal with little nutritional value. "Yes," Rebeca cooed, "he must really want you here!"
With that, Prisca smiled a huge, toothless grin. The child was completely floppy and didn't even have enough strength to cry, just like what you would expect from an extremely malnourished infant, but she smiled when Rebeca spoke to her, and it shocked me. It was like her body had given up but her spirit hadn't. Her eyes sparkled when she heard her name, when she heard that God wants her.
We gave her a bottle of fresh made formula, and she gobbled it down. We taught her mother how to give small frequent feedings and assured her that she didn't need to worry anymore about how to feed her baby. The milk is on us.
It was beautiful. The scene was tragic. Painful. Desperate. An abandoned mother dealt a bad hand, left alone, trying to scrape what she can to buy milk for her baby - a baby who is complicated due to a malformation that she didn't ask for, one that keeps her from being about to suck and swallow, one that has forced her into malnutrition. And in the middle of all that, she smiles. And suddenly everyone - including the tearful mother and the widowed grandmother - smiled, too. Because we saw it. Joy in suffering.
She gets it, I thought to myself, better than even I do. What it means to have joy and suffering at the same time. Joy in suffering.
When the world sees how followers of Jesus can suffer with joy, they will want what we have, and we can tell them where our treasure comes from. Who he is.
"Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed." (Psalm 34:5)
May your face be radiant, like Prisca's.
Psalm 34:19 promises suffering. Afflictions are a guarantee. In a place ranked the seventh least developed nation in the world, where over half the population cannot read or write, where families live on less than $2 a day, where people die of preventable diseases because they do not have access to the most basic medical care, where mothers are too malnourished themselves to breastfeed their own babies, where girls and boys grow up without parents because of maternal mortality and the corruption of gold mines, where young women are exploited for sex, where Christians are persectuted and cast out of their own communities and families for believing in Jesus and abandoning their idols...people understand that suffering is a guarantee. That's not the question.
The question is how we handle it.
Just a few verses before the one written above, Psalm 34:5 teaches that the way of a Christ-follower is not only a way of suffering.
"Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed."
The way of a Christ-follower is not only a way of suffering; it is also a way of radiant joy. The two mix and mingle together, even dance hand in hand.
There is a stark contrast between believers in God and the people of the world by the way that they suffer. When the people of the world suffer, they suffer with shame. When Christians suffer, they suffer with joy.
How can this be? It only makes sense because of the resurrected life we have in Jesus, the hope of heaven after we die, the relationship we have with the God of the universe who is a perfect father, and the reason he gives us for living. Such is a heavenly, holy hope that no amount of earthly suffering could ever overcome it.
I watched Rebeca hold baby Prisca. At eight months old, she has known more suffering than I have in my entire lifetime. Born to a teenage mother who had to drop out of school at a critical time (equivalent to the senior year) to take care of a baby. She was born with a cleft palate and tongue tie, making it hard for her to suckle and swallow so she quickly became malnourished and her mother's milk dried up. She was enrolled in the infants in distress program, but after a few months, she quit coming because her mother no longer had enough money to pay for milk at about $18 a month. She had been using her inheritance, her deceased father's social security checks every three months, to buy the milk for her baby...until that ran out. Her father was gone, her mother is a widow with no income, and her husband is totally uninterested in helping her. He doesn't even live with her, hardly visits, and only rarely gives help. One time he sent her $10 to buy a new outfit, but she couldn't bring herself to buy something for herself when she couldn't even feed her baby. She bought a half a month's supply of milk instead.
It has been four months since Prisca has had any milk.
Rebeca held baby Prisca, nothing but skin and bones, in her arms. She looked like a malnourished newborn; one would never guess she was eight-months old. Every single one of her ribs jutted out, her little arms and legs had no muscle, her head was twice too big for her body, and her skin clung to her but remained tight when pinched...a sign of dehydration. She carried the burden of poverty and abandonment in her tiny frame, but she also carried an undeniable strength that has sustained her fragile life against all odds.
"God must really want you!" Rebeca said to her with wide eyes and a big smile in her best baby-talk voice. We all knew it was a miracle that she was even alive. She had gone four months with no milk, only a light flour-based cereal with little nutritional value. "Yes," Rebeca cooed, "he must really want you here!"
With that, Prisca smiled a huge, toothless grin. The child was completely floppy and didn't even have enough strength to cry, just like what you would expect from an extremely malnourished infant, but she smiled when Rebeca spoke to her, and it shocked me. It was like her body had given up but her spirit hadn't. Her eyes sparkled when she heard her name, when she heard that God wants her.
We gave her a bottle of fresh made formula, and she gobbled it down. We taught her mother how to give small frequent feedings and assured her that she didn't need to worry anymore about how to feed her baby. The milk is on us.
It was beautiful. The scene was tragic. Painful. Desperate. An abandoned mother dealt a bad hand, left alone, trying to scrape what she can to buy milk for her baby - a baby who is complicated due to a malformation that she didn't ask for, one that keeps her from being about to suck and swallow, one that has forced her into malnutrition. And in the middle of all that, she smiles. And suddenly everyone - including the tearful mother and the widowed grandmother - smiled, too. Because we saw it. Joy in suffering.
She gets it, I thought to myself, better than even I do. What it means to have joy and suffering at the same time. Joy in suffering.
When the world sees how followers of Jesus can suffer with joy, they will want what we have, and we can tell them where our treasure comes from. Who he is.
"Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed." (Psalm 34:5)
May your face be radiant, like Prisca's.
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