Sharing Space in the Schoolhouse of Suffering

Well, everybody hurts sometimes,
Everybody cries.
And everybody hurts sometimes.
And everybody hurts sometimes.
So, hold on,
Hold on.

The words by William Berry, Peter Buck, Michael Mills and Michael Stipe (aka R.E.M.) are familiar to anyone who listened to much pop music in the 90s. "Everybody Hurts" was written as a song to comfort teenagers going through the pains of growing up (including the heartbreaks associated with first love). The song was actually so influential in Great Britain that, according to Wikipedia, the British charity the Samaritans actually published a brochure advertising their suicide hotline with only the lyrics to the song and the hotline number.

There's something about that concept that helps us in our pain: "Everybody hurts," not just, "I hurt." I think it's because there's an isolating factor to pain. When we hurt, we feel like no one understands us--like no one else could have ever felt what we feel; or at least they don't appreciate the extent of it. The poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote these even more famous words:

Laugh and the world laughs with you,
Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.

We laugh together but cry alone. And yet, according to Wilcox, there are more lonely tears than common laughter in "the sad old earth." So we're alone but there are a lot of us here "alone" together.

"Everybody hurts." There really is something comforting about that. We're not really alone. But as comforting as it is for a moment, it's not quite enough for the long dark night that strangles the light out of our souls on an ongoing basis. Pain is relative. Pain is not fairly distributed. Some of it just goes on and on and isn't so big in individual doses but really stymies us when we seem to be struggling in ways others aren't (this is more the kind of pain that I deal with and have been dealing with lately--usually related to rejections, regrets and failures). Some of it is really, harshly, world-shakingly rough (like my mentor, who lost his wife to cancer last night or my friends whose baby died the day he was born two weeks ago). But it's each our own pain and suited to us individually.

And while it's a small comfort to say, "Everybody hurts," is there something better we can say? Can we offer something that fits each and every one of us and can get us through any hurt, something that lasts. And is there a reason for it all. How about this? The same God who created this whole universe loved us enough to enter into our pain. And HE understands. And not just because He knows what He's doing and the plans He has for us, but because, in the Person of Jesus, God Himself has actually been through it. Consider these words from the writer of Hebrews:

In the days of His flesh, He [Jesus] offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation, being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 5:7-10 (NASB)


This is perhaps one of the most amazing and perplexing passages in the Scripture. Jesus prayed to the Father who was "able to save Him from death, and He was heard" (v. 7). But wait a minute! Jesus prayed to be spared from death if possible BUT HE STILL DIED! How can the writer of Hebrews say that, "He was heard because of His piety," by, "the One able to save Him from death?" If God heard Him, why didn't He save Him? And that's not the only problem: Jesus was God Himself, the Son of God, who always submits to the Father, so how could it be that, "He learned obedience from the things which He suffered" (v. 8)?

Tackling the latter problem first, it seems to me that this "learning" of obedience refers not to learning how to obey (Jesus always obeys the Father) but rather to gaining an experiential understanding of obedience and the price it carries--He learned what it really would mean to Him personally to obey by the sufferings He underwent. He obeyed the Father by coming in human flesh to suffer and die--something that is impossible for His God nature but is the norm for humanity (and thus made possible by Jesus' own human nature). And in His sufferings, He learned what that true measure of obedience was. If Jesus' sufferings taught Him what obedience means when He always obeyed perfectly to begin with, do we have any less to learn than Jesus Himself?

But even besides that, what a comfort it is to think that God actually understands our needs experientially:

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.
Hebrews 4:15 (NASB)

He pled with God for His life but He submitted to the will of the Father in His death. "He was heard". . . and the answer came back, "No, but I will accomplish My will in You." Jesus submitted as He always did and died so that God's plan of salvation might be actualized.

But Jesus isn't the only servant of God to ask to be released from sufferings. And He's not the only one whom God denied. Consider Paul, to whom the Lord had revealed the glories of heaven. But then, suffering came to teach Paul, even as it had the blessed Son of God Himself and just like Jesus, the Apostle pled to be spared:

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me.
2 Corinthians 12:7-8 (NASB)

But as with the Father had with Christ, so the Lord had other plans for Paul:

And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults , with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (NASB)

And so suffering--the great teacher of Christ Himself--taught Paul as well. It taught him, "to keep from exalting" himself (v 7). It taught him that the grace of Christ "is sufficient" for our needs (v.9). It taught him to be "well content" with all the trials he would face "for Christ's sake" (v. 10). And it taught him that his weakness leaves room for Christ to exercise His strength in him (vv. 9, 10). What have we to learn that only suffering can teach us? Praise God that He understands our weakness and loves us so much in the midst of it!

Father, forgive me for crying out against the great teacher Suffering. His wounds instruct me just as they instructed my Lord before me. Thank you for granting to me not only faith but suffering so that I can learn what it means to obey and so that Your strength may show through in my weakness. Teach me not to exalt in myself; and I pray that You would continue to refine me in the cauldron of suffering, not maliciously or excessively but only as much as it takes to make me more like Christ, obedient and used by You. Thank You for blessing me with so much more good than I could ever deserve and for submitting me to so much less suffering than I surely do deserve. I am in awe of You, Lord. Please comfort my friends who are hurting, Lord. I love You. Teach me to love You more. Amen.