A Silver Lining Amidst the Suffering

I just finished re-reading one of my favorite books by Phillip Yancey
entitled Where is God When it Hurts? This book helps me to view pain
in a new light and encourages me to find meaning in suffering. I
accept I’ll never know why the world is full of so much pain (age-old
question), focusing instead on how it can be transformed. I am
reminded that it can be destructive to provide cop-out “Christian”
answers to the suffering when we really don’t the know the reasons
behind it and the situation seems unfair and nothing we can say will
resolve the pain. Despite all that, this book challenges me to hope
that this life is not really the end and teaches me how pain can
sometimes be a gift. For example, pain is a warning system to inform
us when something is wrong and alerts us to take action to try and
make it better. I could continue, but Phillip Yancey puts it better so
if you’re interested then I urge you to check out his book.

Even if I had not been reading his book, I still think I would have
noticed a silver lining in the fight against AIDs. Please understand
that I do not wish this upon anybody, but it’s here and we have to
respond to it. As an observer and participant in the crusade to
combat AIDs, I’ve witnessed people joining together in a beautiful way
to care for one another. Brought to their knees, humbled out of
necessity to be cared for, coming together because their sufferings
are too great to bear alone – people leaning on people. I see it in
the Chibuto community as the sick, the healthy, the locals, the
foreigners, the educated, the uneducated, young and old link hands.

For the last month I have been participating in home care visits and
support groups. At every meeting the participants sing, dance, and
pray. During the home visits, local community members routinely check
up on the sick in a gesture to say, “You matter to me. I share in this
pain with you.” (I would like to point out that the caretakers are not
under family obligation, and that the care is not institutionalized.)
Genuine concern. Love in action.

During the support groups, all the HIV+ people share their pain,
complaints about their symptoms, anguish over hunger, and ultimately
comfort one another. Sometimes they cry in sadness and yell in anger
because they don’t understand and they hurt. There is always someone
else there who has been through a similar experience with the disease
and can provide a testimony on how they made it through. I was
particularly moved by a young, pregnant woman who feared that she
would transfer HIV to her baby. A woman bouncing a toddler on her knee
responded that she had experienced that same fear, but that she had
prevented the transmission by following the recommended protocols
she’d learned at the support group.

Often the group laughed and smiled. Another young woman said she was
done for good with men because they’d never done anything good for
her. When she adamantly proclaimed she was swearing off sex, the group
teased and laughed with her telling her surely she’d change her tune.
Nothing like the mention of sex to get any crowd riled up, guaranteed.
Their sickness definitely did not strip them of their sense of humor.
In all seriousness, what struck me was how these people came to the
meeting and what they gained. They came raw, real, broken. They seemed
to leave with rejuvenated spirits and the will to keep on living.

Afterwards, I traveled out to the country and watched another
spectacular scene. A group of activists at the community center were
passing on their culture by teaching AIDs orphans their songs and
dances. The activists circled with the children singing about how
they were here to help and support the kids. The song acknowledged
the children’s great loss, but strongly affirmed that the children
were not alone. The song continued that these women, the larger
community, and a loving God all remained with them.

The AIDs epidemic is awful, but I am seeing humans pull through
against the odds, forced to lean on each other for strength. In the
process, they are loving and bearing each other’s burdens. Where my
faith figures into all this is simple. I maintain hope that this life
is not the end. Furthermore, I trust that God himself knows what we’re
going through because he came down as Jesus and experienced every
human emotion personally. He knows what it is like to be lonely,
tired, sick, suffering, to die. But death on the cross was not the
end, resurrection followed. My faith helps me hope there’s something
more to all this, and for now my job is to respond to others by trying
to model Jesus’ life on Earth all the while finding the silver lining.
I cannot imagine a better way to lead my life or a leader I respect
more to try and imitate…