Suffering: Friend or Foe?
Suffering: Friend or Foe?
Fire is a capricious friend. One moment it can be the best companion imaginable. An instant later it can turn on you with a vengeance. I think back to a camping trip with my husband a couple of summers ago. I had looked forward to spending a cold evening huddled alongside a warm fire in the high Sierras. That’s why I didn’t mind when Ken left me by the firepit one night to fill his canteen at the creek.
It was such a pleasant night. The sky was huge and the stars seemed to hang so low. A slight breeze wafted the scent of pine right into our camp and the fire cracked and popped with amiable conversation. I sat mesmerized in front of the orange-red coals, feeling the heat on my cheeks, breathing in an aroma of burning oak.
The fire was my friend in the middle of a cold, dark forest.
Suddenly a wind came up and the whole picture changed. The flames vaulted higher and a choking cloud of smoke enveloped me. Unable to wheel myself away from the fire—or even cry out—I could only sit there, sputtering and coughing. Terrified, I watched the growing flames begin to lick around my feet. For a few awful seconds, I was afraid I would be seriously burned. There was nothing I could do about it.
At that moment, Ken returned, dropped his canteen and ran to push my wheelchair out of the path of smoke and fire.
I gained a new respect for our campfire that night. I learned how quickly a cozy mountain blaze can turn from friend to foe.
Fire. It’s another one of those things with great potential for good—but also for bad. A campfire can barbecue tasty hamburgers one moment only to break its boundaries and attack a forest the next.
So it is with suffering. With profound potential for good, it can also be a destroyer. Suffering can pull families together, uniting them through hardship, or it can rip them apart in selfishness and bitterness. Suffering can file all the rough edges off your character, or it can further harden you.
It all depends. On us. On how we respond. By what we choose to do in the middle of our suffering. Do we use it—or let it use us? Do we go to God—or try to battle it out on our own?
Don’t be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering as though something strange was happening to you. Remember the words of James: “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12).
Suffering, which looks and feels like such a determined enemy, can be a valuable ally.
Only you can decide which it will be.