Don’t waste your suffering
I recently came across a very short booklet – only 12 pages of text – by American pastor and author John Piper, written just before he had surgery for prostate cancer. In typically robust fashion it’s called, ‘Don’t Waste Your Cancer’. What he has to say is pithy, wise, compassionate and deeply biblical, and could be applied far more widely than to cancer alone. It could almost be titled, ‘Don’t Waste Your Suffering.’ Here is one of his eleven brief points (I have replaced ‘cancer’ with ‘suffering’; the italics are original):
‘We waste our suffering if we let it drive us into solitude instead of deepen our relationships with manifest affection. When Epaphroditus brought the gifts to Paul sent by the Philippian church, Epaphroditus became ill and almost died. Paul tells the Philippians, “He has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill” (Philippians 2:26-27, ESV). What an amazing response! It does not say they were distressed that he was ill, but that he was distressed because they heard he was ill. That is the kind of heart God is aiming to create with suffering: a deeply affectionate, caring heart for people. Don’t waste your suffering by retreating into yourself.’
How easy it is to turn in on ourselves when we’re suffering, when a better way is open to us – a way modelled by the Lord Jesus himself who, in the midst of his own suffering on the cross, took time to make sure that his mother was taken care of.