Tag: Job

Job and Spiritual Scars

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As I worked through a trauma healing program recently, a partner and I talked about how our heart wounds can be healed, but how they sometimes still leave scars that misshape the tendencies of our hearts for our entire lives. 

Later, in a time set aside for lamenting, my spirit was almost too heavy to connect to words. After a time of silence and of trying to pray, I was reminded of one of Job’s laments, and his expression of faith in the lament: “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth.”

Spiritual abuse is one of those heart wounds or mental/emotional traumas that leaves deep scars. Spiritual abuse is a type of control or manipulation carried out by a spiritual authority, often in the name of God. It ignores the dignity of a person created in the image of God, and abuses power to belittle their spiritual autonomy and control their choices and behaviors. When scriptures are misapplied, when someone claims the authority of God backing their decisions or actions, or when a moral code is enforced outside of what the Bible claims is God’s will and law—those actions, claims, and words slowly begin to reshape the spiritually abused person’s idea of who God is. God can become to them not who they read about in the Bible, but who their abuser claims God to be. 

In cases of spiritual abuse, especially ongoing spiritual abuse, the face of God slowly changes into the face of the abuser. And that kind of damage is hard to shake. The best way to heal those wounds is for the abused person to re-learn God’s character for themselves by immersing themselves in scripture. But the nature of the harm done often makes it difficult, or impossible for a time, for the victim to read scripture because it has been abused to wound and control them. 

For a very long time, and possibly for a lifetime after the spiritual abuse, the victim will struggle against the ‘character of God’ the abuser portrayed to them. The pull is like a gravity of sorts. In off-guard moments they will hear that ‘voice of God’ or see that ‘face’ as God’s rather than who he portrays himself to be to us in his Word. And that is what I mean by spiritual scars. Just as a child who has been abandoned by a father will often expect God to abandon them as well, a spiritual abuse victim struggles to separate their spiritual mentor’s portrayal of God from the real thing. 

I have a poster in my room with an artistic portrayal of the Trinity. It is an absolutely beautiful work of art, and I can get lost in the details for hours. The Father stands above the Son, holding a richly embroidered cloak detailing images from the gospels to drape around his shoulders. And the Son hovers above the Spirit, holding what looks to be the source of a spring of water (welling up to eternal life) which pours out around and behind the Spirit’s head. All three persons have rich, brown skin, kind eyes, and welcoming expressions. But the Spirit is imagined in the art as female, just as the Father and Son are imagined as male. 

Any portrayal of God assumes a gender the Bible doesn’t explicitly state. In the beginning, both man and woman were created in the image of God, and neither one is less or more a part of God’s image. God is spirit, and has no bodily gender. God’s character encompasses traits we consider both masculine and feminine. And while Jesus walked the earth in the body of a man, the Spirit of God is often described in feminine terms, with sheltering wings like a mother bird, like an eternal mother who gives us our second birth, like a dove, expectantly brooding over the earth charged with the promise of yet-unborn life. These images are not meant to be a literal description of God just as my poster is not meant to portray an actual form of God. But I found the feminine, nurturing, motherly portrayal of the Spirit to be just what I needed to help rewrite some of my spiritual scars that constantly tug at me to understand the character of God as something twistedly masculine.

Job also had spiritual scars from his ordeal of suffering. After his family died or left him, after he lost his worldly possessions and even the wholeness of his own mind and body, his ‘friends’ lectured him about how he must have wronged God to deserve such treatment. After listening to their interminable prattle, Job lashes out to God, perhaps because he has begun to believe what the friends said of him. In chapter 19, Job assumes God is against him, is waging war on him, and has humiliated, uprooted, and ignored him in his most desperate time of need. 

But in the true nature of lament, Job pours out his heart to God and then expresses what he knows to be true even if he cannot feel the truth of it: 

“I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”

Even with the pull toward misunderstanding God’s love for him, Job knows that one day his redeemer will stand on the earth for him.

And the text is even more rich than that. The word ‘redeemer’ there is a beautiful tapestry of cultural meanings. It is the word used for someone who buys a person their freedom. It is used for a family member who avenges a death with the blood of another. It is used in Ruth to refer to Boaz—a close relative who chooses to save a family’s name and inheritance by taking a widow as his wife. And a textual variant of this verse in Job calls this redeemer a defender or vindicator. Job knows that one day someone will stand for him, pay for him, remember his story and honor his heritage, and vindicate him against false claims made against him. 

Another possible reading of the text says that this redeemer will not stand upon the earth, but upon Job’s grave. Can you see the faith that Job expresses here? In the end, after he is dead and gone, someone will come to stand on his bones to redeem him. Job will not be forgotten or ignored even in death. And he proclaims this truth about a God he has, in the same breath, accused of ignoring and attacking him.

But Job goes on from here into even deeper faith. He says even after his body has decayed, he will see God with his own eyes—he himself, and no one else, will see God in the flesh. A variant of this phrase is “after I awake, though my body has been destroyed, then in my flesh I will see God.” Even when his life hangs in the balance and he does not know if he will live or die, Job knows that one day when he is raised again, he will see God for himself. 

And Job is happy about that. 

“Oh, how my heart yearns within me.” Goodness. Even when Job feels the Lord has viciously caused the unendurable suffering he has felt, even when he feels accused by God and by man, Job longs for the day when he will be redeemed, when someone will stand for him to remember him and tell his story. And he does not fear the face of an accusing and harmful God on that day. He longs with everything in him to see the face of a God who loves him and who sees only innocence and wholeness because Job has been redeemed from death and suffering. 

My own heart brims over with joy at that. I may struggle through this life and its suffering. I may have a scarred understanding of God’s face when it turns toward me. But I know that one day, when I wake from my grave, Jesus my redeemer will stand on the earth. He will vindicate me from false accusations. He will look on me and see innocence and wholeness because he himself redeemed me and my sins with his blood and his life to make me a part of his family. And the face I see on that day will not be disfigured. It will not look like what I have been groomed to believe of the face of God. Oh how I ache for that day. 

Some of our spiritual wounds won’t be healed until heaven, and some of our scars may plague us for the rest of our lives on this earth. But that’s okay because we KNOW they will be healed no matter how much we struggle with them now. One day our living Redeemer will stand in victory on our graves, and when we awake we will see him with our own eyes and not the eyes of another. We will be healed and our hearts will be whole. 

“You’re gonna suffer… but you’re gonna be happy about it…”

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I intended to write a blog a month into my life here in Uganda to tell you how things are, and what the lay of the land is. But I only realized I was a month in a few days after the mark, and there wasn’t time to write until a week and a half later. If that doesn’t sum up life here, I don’t know what does. Africa sets its own time and pace; woe to those who try to fight against it!

There are so many things I could tell you—from my misadventures to meeting some new heroes in the faith out in the refugee camps, from how many times I’ve gotten lost in my tiny town to the whirl of impressions, colors, and accents this new life has been for me.

But instead I’m going to tell you about suffering. It’s not that my first month here hasn’t been amazing. There are certainly tough bits to life here, but overall it has been filled with amazing people, sights, and experiences. Through it all though, suffering has been a theme.

I’ve heard incredible stories of faith in the face of persecution from my believing brothers and sisters who’ve fled here from Sudan. I’ve heard testimonies of believers on my team who have been through deep, dark valleys in their walks with God. I’ve been through a week-long trauma healing training (see my previous post) to help prepare me for my work in the refugee camps. I’ve heard stories of terrible evil, hopeless brokenness, and blinding sorrow. We have also rejoiced at God’s hand in the suffering, but that doesn’t lessen the weight of it all.

In the midst of this focus on suffering, I’ve sometimes laughed, sometimes grumbled at the tiny ‘sufferings’ in my life. Why does the water go out just when I want to take a shower? How should I respond when there isn’t frequent enough electricity for my fridge to keep cool? How do I handle only eating foods I can buy and prepare in the same day because the ants or the lack of refrigeration keep me from doing anything else? I’m not sick often, but how do I glorify God in my irritating half-sicknesses from anti-malaria medication or mystery illnesses that come with adjusting to life here? How do I view them in light of my friends’ actual suffering, or greater still, in view of the cross?

I tend not to be a complainer. I’ll buckle up under inconveniences and ride them out or try to bear through difficult things one day at a time. So when I contrast the greater suffering of those around me to my little… inconveniences… I tend to write them off and pretend they don’t exist or don’t bother me. How can I complain about my defunct shower when brothers and sisters in the refugee camps have to wait in line for hours just to get a jug full of water just for their family to drink from?

The Lord answered this confusion with a passage in Colossians that Africa has given me new eyes to see. “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church…”

Paul wrote to the believers in Colossae that he was joyful in his sufferings because they served a greater purpose—they were part of his work as a minister of the gospel. They were a gift he could give his people to build them up. And in the verse above, 1:24, he explains that his sufferings are no small gift.

The pain he felt in his body actually made Jesus’ sufferings for them complete. Paul isn’t saying that Jesus’ death on the cross wasn’t perfect or wasn’t enough. He was saying that Jesus’ suffering alone didn’t finish the job of building up believers around the world into the Body of the Church. As chapter 1 goes on, Paul explains that his ministry allows him to show how wonderful God’s salvation is to people who do not yet believe. That, he says, is worth suffering for, and he’s joyful to give all his toil, all his struggle, all his energy for that purpose—to build up the Church into Christ’s body here on earth.

That’s kind of revolutionary to me. I’ve never heard teaching on this passages that explained how our daily toil and hard work is useful or honoring to God. Think about it! My sufferings get to finish off a work Jesus started, a work Paul participated in. If I suffer sleeplessness or uncomfortable temperatures or questionable food in the line of the work God has called me to, my suffering is a gift of sacrifice I can share to help build up God’s people. And this goes for everyone’s work.

You moms that are tired of washing the same exploded diaper contents out of the same baby clothes, you church members who are exhausted from giving your effort and energy to church events, you grad school students wishing that just once you could get a full night’s sleep, you receptionists who faithfully deal with grumpy people—all of your suffering gives you a chance to show that you act like Jesus in tough situations because he’s worth it to you.

We have all been called to our own type of ministry, in whatever line of work we’re in. Ministering to the people around us means that the little inconveniences that build up can be a holy blessing and sacrifice to them. Your thankless work as a therapist, your suffering in that unpaid or not-paid-enough church internship, your dedication to your school work, your endurance in a difficult job, your kindness to unkind people, all those are sacrifices that build up the people around you. They give you a chance to show that you’re joyful in your hard work and that you choose to take your sufferings as an opportunity to build people up and to draw them to Christ.

So the next time I’m frustrated because I have no electricity to power my fan, and the next time you are ready to throw in the towel because your daily endurance and hard work seem pointless, let’s remember that our suffering can minister to others. Like Paul, in our very own bodies we can fill up what’s left to do in Christ’s work of building up the church. If we choose to see it that way, our suffering can be a very important gift to the people around us.

A Voice

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“Voice” is a hot-button issue in our culture today. Everyone wants a voice. They want not just to speak, but to be heard, to be listened to. We even have a hit TV show, “The Voice,” that lets us live through the contestants who get to sing on a national stage and compete for a chance for their voice to be heard. But what does the Bible say about voice? What does our culture crave so much and how does Scripture answer that craving?

The Bible has a lot to say on the topic, actually. More than you might think on the surface. Themes run all throughout Scripture that remind followers of God to care for the poor and oppressed, the orphans and widows and refugees, the sorts of people who don’t actually have the ability to stand up and speak for themselves or who wouldn’t be heard if they did.

Waaaayyyyy back in the Old Testament a man named Job begged God for someone to listen to him and hear his cry for help. Go read Job chapter 19, 9, or 16 and you’ll see that what he asks for, is a voice. Everyone around him won’t listen, won’t help, won’t encourage him. He begs God for someone to testify on his behalf, to be his witness in heaven. He wants an arbiter to stand up for him and be his voice in a heavenly court he has no access to.

The book of Esther deals with voice too. The young woman the book was named after had no choice in losing her parents, she had no power to resist people who kept her away from her homeland and forced her into the King’s harem. So when the Lord gave her the place of queen, she used her voice in the royal court to speak for those who couldn’t. Even if speaking up would cost her life, Esther spoke to the king to beg him to save her people. She knew what it was like not to have a voice, so she used hers to speak for others who couldn’t.

If you were to sit down with me I could talk with you for days about Abigail in 1 Samuel 25, or Hannah in 1 Samuel 1 and 2, or Mary, or Elizabeth. I could talk to you about how God’s heart as revealed in Scripture truly does bless the meek—those who do not have strength or set aside their strength to do the right thing.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” Jesus taught. And Philippians 2:5-11 tell us that Jesus himself became meek as an example to us, and set aside his divine power in many ways on earth so that he could be a humble servant rather than a proud king. He set aside his privilege only to inherit the earth as his kingdom at the end of all things. But while he was here on earth, he became meek for a very important reason…

Jesus became a voice for the meek.

While he could have claimed any power or honor or treatment he wanted, he used his influence often to speak for those with no voice.

In John 4, Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well. She was an outcast in every sense of the word. No one in her community listened to her or respected her. She even went to the well during the hottest part of the day to avoid people. But Jesus came to her. And he told her to give him a drink. Not surprised by an order from a man, but confused that a good Jewish man would even speak to her, she asked him why he would accept water from her, a Samaritan outcast. But he flipped the script. Instead of demanding or demeaning, he offered her something. He offered her a gift of eternal abundant life. After their conversation, she believed he was truly the Son of God. She ran into town to bring everyone to Jesus to hear the good news that he had come.

Every person in her town listened to her story. They believed her. And they came to Jesus. Because of her testimony, they believed. No longer would they remember her as the woman who’d had five husbands. They would remember her as the one who brought them to the Lord. Jesus changed her life and gave her a voice and value in her town as a daughter of God. How often do we give our women voices like that? How often do they get to share their stories with us in a safe space in our church without fear of being shunned or treated differently, when what they really have to say is a testimony of how the Lord has worked mightily in their lives?

Jesus did the same thing again for a women with no voice in Luke 7:36-50. Everyone called her a ‘sinful woman,’ and she says not a single word in her own story. She comes to worship Jesus, weeping over him, offering up what must have been her most precious possession to anoint him, washing his feet as an act of service and love, and drying them with her hair. The self-righteous at the table begin mumbling that Jesus can’t be a prophet, or he would know who she was and wouldn’t let her touch him in public. She may have been a prostitute in her past, or she may just have been an unmarried woman people whispered about as she went about her day on her own. We don’t know. But the story tells us that a man named Simon, who was certainly whispering at the table, had her story already fixed in his head. He doesn’t care to know more about her, much less to admire her act of worship.

But Jesus tells a different story, and speaks for the woman. He tells Simon a parable, about a man who was forgiven much and a man who was forgiven little. Jesus compares the woman to the men in his story, and explains to Simon that her great love and her act of worship should be an example to him. Jesus spoke for her and told her story in a way that humanized her and honored her act of worship rather than demeaned her. In the Mark 14 and Matthew 26 accounts of the story, we even learn that Jesus made a promise that people will share her story around the world wherever the gospel is preached in memory of her. Talk about giving her a voice!

The bleeding woman story in Luke 8 is also a favorite of mine. She is the picture of a voiceless woman. Sick and shamed for much of her life, she pushed through a crowd to get her one shot at reaching Jesus. She must not have expected him to talk to her or even acknowledge her because she approached him from behind and just touched the edge of his garment. She was immediately healed. Mission accomplished. But not for Jesus. He wouldn’t let her slink away out of the crowd like she was used to. He asked who touched him, and she tried to hide but saw that she couldn’t. She came forward trembling, afraid, falling down in front of him.

But Jesus prompted her to speak. So she told her testimony, of her sickness, her desire to get to Jesus, and her miraculous healing. Jesus gave her his spotlight to share her story and praise him with it. And after she finishes, he calls her daughter.

Daughter.

Can you imagine the other names this woman must have been called? She was shunned. Poor. Broken. Unclean. Weak. Sick. But Jesus called her daughter, and in a place where all could hear. He loved her. He speaks his peace over her, commends her faith, and sends her off to a new and healed life. He gave her a voice and a new beginning. She was heard, accepted, and healed.

And isn’t that what we really mean when we say we want a voice? We want someone to listen. We want someone to accept us with our good and our bad. We want to be healed. Only Jesus can truly give that to us. Only he can truly heal. But we should also follow his example to lift up the people around us who can’t tell their own stories, who aren’t listened to, who are broken or silent or ignored or dismissed. They may not have a voice, but we have one we can share.

We all have our circles of influence—our friends, small groups, classes, co-workers. Some may care to listen to what we have to say more than others. But we all have our small spotlights that we live in with some who respect us and love us.

Think about who isn’t allowed in those circles, or who would feel like an outcast there. Can you find ways to speak up for them? Help them tell their story like Jesus did for the woman who anointed him. Let them tell their own story by your invitation, like Jesus did for the bleeding woman. Lead them to Jesus and give them a platform to share their testimony like Jesus did for the woman at the well. Think about your church interactions especially. Do people with different education levels, ethnic backgrounds, or income brackets all have a place to be heard and to grow in your church? How many of them are on staff? How many get to share with the church on a regular basis? Are there ways they aren’t made to feel comfortable in sharing their struggles? How can you be Jesus to them and share your influence on their behalf?

One of my new favorite Martin Luther King Jr. quotes goes like this:

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

He was talking about voice for the powerless and abused, the voice of those who suffer injustice. Use your power like Jesus did to give a voice to others. Become meek like he did and use what strength you have to stand up for others. When we give our voice away, when we are truly meek, we inherit the Kingdom together.

 

On Suffering

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Before I came to training, I was reading through Job. There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to it, but I just felt one of those undeniable urges to read one of the more obscure Old Testament books of wisdom on suffering. Maybe it doesn’t bode well for my time on the field. If I needed preparation for suffering that early before my deployment, maybe there’s some insurmountable obstacle awaiting me. I don’t know. And, frankly, I’d prefer to worry about it later, when it’s actually here.

It occurred to me in one of my less-self-centered moments to think that maybe my suffering preparation and study was not for me, but for people I’ll work with. That’s probably true, considering they’ll be kids and girls who endure suffering beyond what I could even imagine: slavery, abandonment, physical abuse, abject poverty, and sexual abuse. They, of all people, understand the depths of suffering. They, of all people, wonder why a God who is supposed to love them let these terrible things happen. And they, of all people, deserve an answer from us. But oftentimes, instead of an answer, we come preaching past them, patting their heads, and telling them “go in peace; keep warm and well fed” (James 2:15-17). I am just as guilty as the next person, and do not hear me saying there are none who care for the least of these. Many do, and do it well. But all the same, many of us, myself included, are much more comfortable to look past suffering rather than engage the sufferer and share with them a God who bears their burdens.

As I read Job, I recalled the story and began to empathize with a man who experienced a pain disproportionate to his righteous walk of life. His well-educated friends, who assumed they understood the prestigious theologies and doctrines of their day, sat with him in stunned silence for a while. Perhaps they were stunned that a man so great had incurred the wrath of God. Perhaps they found their theologies inadequate and had to concoct some new answer to this unexpected situation. Perhaps they genuinely grieved with their friend. But when they opened their mouths, everything hit the fan. Your suffering is God’s punishment for wrongdoers, they said. God will hear prayers of repentance, they said. God will listen to the voice of a man humbled in heart and broken in spirit, they said. Repent and your life will be easy. A lot of what they said is actually a truth in itself, just misapplied in Job’s situation. Not everything though. Not everything by a long shot. But they brewed up their solutions and delivered them to a man who would have genuinely preferred for someone to instead scrape the sores on his skin with a broken clay pot.

They paid no heed to the suffering body in front of them and spoke instead to a soul they considered trapped in it. They misapplied theology and doctrines to corroborate their poor understanding of God. Perhaps they meant well. So do we. So did Machiaveli. So did Hitler. So did lots of people. But meaning well isn’t enough.

If our theology prompts us to talk at sufferers instead of getting down in the dirt and scraping their sores for them, it is severely broken.

Job’s friends didn’t comfort their friend. They didn’t tell him of the God who binds up the broken-hearted. They didn’t speak of a God who fills the empty with good things. They didn’t share with Job about a God who makes the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk. But we should. We should share with the suffering people around us about just who exactly our God is and what he is capable of. But we can’t stop there. Yes, God filled Job again with blessings. And he taught Job that he delights in righteousness—that he is blessed by it. But he never told Job the reason for his suffering. And yes, God didn’t leave Hannah barren. Elijah saw the Lord bring rain after drought. Paul did arrive in Rome with the message of the gospel. But Moses didn’t get to enter the Promised Land. Abraham was over a hundred years old when he had a son, and he didn’t see the nation that came from his boy. Not a one of David’s sons was the promised messiah, the king of kings. If we teach that God heals, but he instead chooses to delay the keeping of his promise, what then? Have we lied to those we taught about a healer God?

It took me until this week to see the New Testament’s answer to Job’s questions.

A dear friend encouraged me before I left for training with Hebrews 13:5b. I started rooting around and discovered a nugget of truth I had never seen before. I hope you’ve hung on with me this long and can read the punchline. I read through and pondered Hebrews 12:4-17. It’s always been a hard book for me, and I feel like I rarely understand the connections the author makes. But this time I got it. I saw the answer to Job’s question. I saw the answers to my own. And I saw the answers we should offer to those suffering all around us.

The Hebrews author first speaks of all suffering as a punishment, or discipline from God (12:7). This confused me, because Job’s suffering was definitely not punishment. That was the point of the whole book. You take that away and you lose not only Job’s integrity, but the whole reason God invited Satan to test Job. If you call Job’s suffering punishment, his friends were right and you call God’s judgment of Job a mistake. So, naturally, I kept fishing around in the text. I realize that the difficulty hinged on my definition of punishment. See, I thought punishment was intentional infliction of harm by the punisher on the punishee for the purpose of discouraging further instances of the offence. I looked up the Greek word for ‘punish’ there, expecting it to be softer. Nope. The Greek word translated ‘punishes’ in verse 6 means ‘to whip.’ So all of our suffering, we are to consider a whipping from God. That’s what those verses literally mean.

It took me some prayer to realize the meaning isn’t in the literal details. ‘Punish’ and ‘discipline’ are the correct translations. Why? Because when a loving father punishes his son, he gives a gift. He takes a moment of pain, shame, or inconvenience—a moment when the son is visited by the consequences of his actions—and brings about a good thing. He seizes a teaching moment in the midst of suffering so that the son can learn something important. Something redeeming. Something healing and guiding. That definition isn’t one you can learn from a Greek dictionary. It comes from experience, and people, like my dad, who’s always been good at taking any opportunity to teach us about everything from retaining walls to fossils to the circulatory system to God-honoring people skills.

And God’s discipline, at least the kind delivered to righteous sufferers (the believers, the young children, etc.) is all aimed at teaching one thing. Here’s the point—the main idea it took me this long to make. The purpose of Job’s suffering, of our suffering, of the suffering of precious little children and girls enslaved before they’re old enough to get rid of their teddy bears? The purpose of that suffering is to teach us that only God can satisfy. In our pain, we look for a cure. In our emptiness, we look for the one who fills us with good things. C. S. Lewis says, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world” (Mere Christianity). Our ever-hungering desires teach us that something perfect exists to completely satisfy them. No friend, significant other, or spouse can fulfill our needs for unconditional love, companionship, or being valued. No medicine can ever fully heal our bodies, cure our pain, and stop us from slowly dying. No amount of hopping between cultures, reading about them, or drooling over then can satisfy our craving for perfect, multifaceted culture of Heaven. No dream job will ever make us feel completely useful, talented, valued, and capable.

No. Our hunger, desires, grief, and loss point us to the One thing who can satisfy them. We realize our body is broken, and only One can make it whole. We realize that even if our yearnings for people lost to us are satisfied, only One person can satisfy all our needs for relationship. God’s discipline shakes us up, turns our desires on their heads, and makes a difficult situation into a gift of teaching, endurance, and faith. Through our grief we realize that we are offered a gift much greater than that which we lost. Through our suffering we realize that we are offered a satisfaction much better than that which we are deprived of.

Our God offers us a satisfaction of greater magnitude than the loss of our suffering.

I’ve always loved Hebrews 12:12-13: “Therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.” But with this new understanding of the previous verses, it has an even richer meaning. It harks back to verses like Isaiah 35:3 and Proverbs 4:26, both of which speak of a healing and redemption much more holistic than physical cure. Verse 13 says to make level paths—to be careful and make sure your way is a righteous one—so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. A man may be lame yet spiritually healed. A man may also be lame and spiritually disabled. But if he follows the straight path with his life, or the narrow way, as Jesus calls it, his lameness does not disable him. In his soul he is healed and whole, and he merely waits for Christ’s return for his body to follow. But a lame man who walks the uneven way, or the wide road leading to destruction, he disables himself. He spends his days in bitterness and when Christ returns, he faces eternal destruction. He will be forever lame. So verses 12 and 13 present two choices in the face of suffering: letting suffering disable us, or letting suffering heal us.

I think it is also our duty to respond correctly to our suffering. Verses 14-17 explain this in-depth. We can either respond to the gift of suffering by looking to the God who satisfies our desires, or we can turn away from him and try to satisfy ourselves in other ways. This is the practical application of the message we must take to the suffering. Our suffering is wasted and useless if we do not let it point us to our Savior. But if we allow God to have his way in his discipline, we choose to cultivate holiness (v. 14a). And if we choose holiness—to be healed and look to the one who satisfies our desires better than any of his creation ever could—God truly does turn our suffering into a gift. It is a gift not only to us, but also to those around us. As believers, our suffering is often incarnational ministry. Jesus sent us out and promised we would suffer just as he had (Jn 20:20-21). That kind of holy suffering, the kind which plays out in the life of someone who chooses to be teachable, glorifies the Lord. It lets others see God in our lives (v.14b).

If we choose to wallow in our suffering, or if we simply do not know who to look to for our needs and fulfillment, we miss God’s grace in suffering, which is a terrible thing. We choose the wrong response, and we do not benefit from the gift God offers us out of our suffering. Not only that, but we become bitter (v. 15). People ask why they suffer and turn on a God whom they see as impassive and uncaring only because, in their suffering, they look for healing and regrowth and redemption in the wrong places. They look to the wrong things, people, and relationships to put them back together again. They feel cheated by God because they do not realize the gift he gives and think that he has taken away only to let them fill the gaping hole with something less than fitting. When instead, if they could only see his grace, he would fill them to overflowing with abundant life. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and define many (v. 15).

The next comment the author of Hebrews makes has always thrown me for a loop. I never had the slightest idea how Esau came into this topic, or how his story even applied. I knew sale of his birthright for a bowl of stew was a great lapse in judgment, but an act of godlessness? That’s a stretch. But when we understand the passage in light of context and in light of the understanding of suffering as God’s discipline, as God’s gift, Esau makes perfect sense. I just told you about the two choices we have in suffering: to become bitter by searching for lesser things to fill us, or to cultivate holyiness by allowing God to use our suffering for his glory and to let others see Him in us. Using Esau’s story here to elaborate on the point is brilliant. You can see the hand of a great storyteller. You see, Esau, too, had those options.

In the small suffering of his hunger, he could choose to change out the gift of his father (his birthright) for some paltry, momentary satisfaction, or he could hold out and accept his father’s gift and receive all that his father intended to give him: land he did not amass, fields he did not plant, blessings he did not deserve; the place of Jacob, the honored son who went on to become the father of the Israelite nation; eternal membership in the kingdom of God’s people. Esau had two options laid before him. He chose in his suffering to take the easier, wider, unlevel road. It led him only to pain, sin, ignominy, and, ultimately, the place of an obscure, hated nation of Edomites. He exchanged his glory for shame (Hos 4:7). He let his suffering rule him and instead chose the route of lesser satisfaction and fulfillment. He became a bitter root that poisoned a whole nation of people. He turned against God because he thought God had disappointed him, rather than looking to his own impatience, self-reliance, and greed as the source of the problem. And his bitterness, as it says in verse 15, grew up as a root to trouble and defile many.

So what do we do with all of this? How should it change how we live, teach, and care? God turns our suffering into discipline. He takes a difficult situation and turns it into a gift by teaching us, and by revealing that only He can perfectly satisfy our longings. We can choose to accept his gift of discipline and thereby cultivate holiness and glorify God to others. Or, we can choose to ignore his discipline and our suffering becomes only a device to grow bitterness in us. Like a root. Picture what roots do to concrete, asphalt, and ancient cities. They slowly crush and destroy, strangling out all life. Who would choose to receive that out of their suffering?

People who know of no other option.

The only answer to “what do we do with this?” is clear. We let our suffering glorify God. And we tenderly approach the other sufferers around us with a better option. God created them to be his sons and daughters, and he calls them to him. It is their birthright—their promised privilege—to become a member of God’s people.             If.             If they only choose to know the One who opens his hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing (Ps. 145:16). It’s a beautiful promise. And it is our blessing and honor, brothers and sisters, to carry it to the suffering around us.