I remember thinking, when I was a child, that my mother would get headaches very frequently. Now that I’m the age she would have been back then… I get the headaches. When you are a child you don’t think about how once you are older you might experience the same pain and suffering you watch your parents go through. Jesus told us that we would suffer for His sake (Matthew 10:22). But the suffering I see most people around me going through is not because religious persecution, but rather just plain old suffering that comes from living in a dying world. I once had a friend who contracted a smoker’s cancer. She never smoked, didn’t hang out with people who smoked and kept, in my opinion, a fairly healthy lifestyle. She died right around the age of 60. “Why me?” she would ask. Indeed… why her? It is easy for us to say that right? Why me? Well… why not me? To know that life isn’t fair all we have to do is turn to the Bible. Poor Joseph was sold into slavery, the apostle Paul had some kind of thorn in his flesh. And Job… how much did that man suffer? Now maybe you are thinking… well Job did suffer for the sake of God. God allowed him to be put to the test by the devil. You and I know that… but Job didn’t. Even at the end of the story, Job still had no idea what went on in the background. Obviously God thought that way was the best choice for him, maybe one day we will understand why.
I wonder if that happens to people nowadays? I’m not saying that I, or anyone I know, is equal to Job. I realize even he wasn’t perfect, but you have to admit, he must have been doing something right for God to be so confident in his fidelity. I wonder if I’ve ever gotten sick and the devil just sat back and said, “You think she’s so much on Your side? Just wait until you see how she reacts to this!!” Because sickness and not feeling well and trials can show who we really are. Many times at work or even at home I might think about saying something that isn’t nice but I’m “with it” enough to realize that wouldn’t be kind and I immediately usher it into the skeet shooting section of my brain. But what about the other day when I had a fever, aches, chills, bad headache, stomach ache, etc.? Are all those things enough of an excuse to justify snapping at my husband or even the poor little cat that doesn’t understand what’s going on? Now I’ve never been (in my adult life) sick and in the hospital about to die, but I have felt like dying. So sick you didn’t really care what was going on around you. How did Jesus do it? How did Jesus care enough about the people who were killing Him to pray to the Father for them (Luke 23:34)? Or to consider what the thief on the cross was saying (Luke 23:43). He even gave charge of His mother to the apostle John (John 19:25-27). Jesus’ physical suffering, regardless of his emotional and spiritual distress, would have been plenty of an excuse for Him to turn a deaf ear to those nearby.
It is hard to care about others when you don’t feel well enough to even care for yourself. But an interesting thing I’ve noted is that when I feel bad, if I can distract myself sometimes the distraction makes me feel a bit better. Perhaps it prevents me from replaying over and over in my head how bad I feel, or maybe it diverts conscious thought away from the pain and onto something or someone else. I noted to a co-worker that one of the perceived benefits of not having children is that I actually CAN be sick. When I feel bad I come home, lay on the couch, whine and moan. But if she is sick she still has to feed her kids, make sure they are clean, make sure they get where they need to go be that school or elsewhere. Unless she is in the hospital she still has to put forth effort to care for another human being. And maybe that was all part of God’s larger plan. Children (and other family members, or even pets) turn our attention away from ourselves. When Jesus focused on His mother or the thief maybe He got a momentary respite from His suffering. Today I woke up as usual feeling quite ill. Choked down a bit of bread and some pills. Took longer than usual but I drug the laundry hamper downstairs and put in a load. Clean clothes are definitely a plus especially when you are sick! A bit later my mom called to see how I was and after talking for several minutes I decided I felt well enough to go putter around the kitchen so by the time we got off the phone the kitchen was cleaned up and the dishwasher started. And I felt some better.
Our battle ground isn’t always obvious. We are not guaranteed a good or easy life. But if we choose to be on the Lord’s side, we are guaranteed His support through it all. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). So whether we physically, emotionally, or spiritually suffer here on earth we can rest assured that God is with us and if we allow Him to He will encourage us to redirect our focus onto Him the great Physician.