A Deliberate Choice November 4, 2009
article and photos by Paula Guest
Is there not enough frustration, disappointment, worry, stress, in our own lives, that we should deliberately take on the pain of others? To open our eyes to the suffering of others causes emotional agony. We feel overwhelmed by the enormity, unable to effect change, and unwilling to step out of our comfort zone.
As the burden on my heart for trafficking victims grew, I felt all of the above in huge portions. Totally inadequate. Totally unwilling. “Please, Lord, let me just change the channel. I don’t want to SEE this. I don’t want to KNOW this. I don’t want to FEEL this!”
But every time I opened my Bible, my eyes would land on another verse about justice. I had long been praying that I would walk so closely to my Lord that I could hear His heart beat. What He was showing me, is that THIS is where His heart beats. If I want to walk in communion with Him, I have to go where He is. I have to care about what He cares about. And I realized that the tears I weep, are His tears.
Psalm 11:7 For the Lord is righteous, He loves justice, upright men will see His face.
I finally surrendered, ”OK, Lord, I get it. Show me what you want me to do.” Kay Warren calls it, “Dangerous Surrender.” And dangerous it is, but the reward far outweighs the pain because you get to SEE HIS FACE.
After all, He loved me enough to take on my suffering. He was willing to let what was crushing me crush Him. How can I do anything less? By offering to suffer with someone else we are living out the commandment “whatever you do for the least of these, you do for Me.”
“Here is the irony of chosen pain, we volunteer to accept a pain we want to do without; we volunteer to be hurt with a hurt we would rather not feel; we volunteer to bear a burden we want very badly not to bear. . . . We are to walk with our eyes wide open in the pain of another human being and claim it as our own.” (Kay Warren, Dangerous Surrender, pg 153)
And so, I went back to Cambodia.
Leave a Reply