The Marked Boundaries of Suffering
I stand in the same spot at the ocean’s edge as I did one year ago. I can’t help but think about the innumerable changes that have filled the days between then and now. Taking in this indescribable, natural beauty last year, I was filled with awe of God as ultimate creator. This year, something new about this ancient ocean will soon catch my eye.
I wrap my sweater tighter around my shoulders as I walk along the shore. Colder temperatures this year accompany the same salt-filled breezes. This rare moment of solitude seems full of lackluster hope. I wish that I would be inspired by the ocean again, that the months-long drought in my writing would end, new ideas washing up as suddenly as the tide over my feet. But the same thought drags my hope back out again: “What good could my words possibly do?”
Suffering and persistent trials have a way of inducing a type of “learned helplessness.” Although there are vast differences in what we have all endured in 2020, I think it’s fair to say our shared cultural experience has been one of trial. In reality life is always out of our control, but we’ve believed the opposite message for so long that the truth is jarring. Thankfully there are degrees to which we can affect change, and those are no trivial matters! When we can’t see clear progress, however, doubt and hopelessness begin to seep in. For the redeemed people of God, there is a clear, though oft overlooked message of hope.
THIS FAR, BUT NO FARTHER
What catches my attention on the shore is the foam-filled edge of the tide, lapping up to the dry sand. In near disbelief I watch the water flow perfectly into the still-dark outline that the previous wave created, just before receding again. An exact match. “Maybe I saw that wrong,” I think, wondering if it’s really all that unique for wild water to move in such a consistent pattern. And immediately the truth of God’s sovereignty springs to my mind. I remember that he tells the waves how far they can go. He says, “Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and total darkness its blanket, when I determined its boundaries and put its bars and doors in place, when I declared: ‘You may come this far, but no farther; your proud waves stop here’?” (Job 38:8-11, CSB).
This far, but no farther. As only the Spirit of God can, he used that simple phrase to wash fresh hope into my heart. Our suffering has a boundary marked by the same sovereign finger of God as the waves.
Many wonderful books on human suffering and the glory of God exist in our world right now. I know I lack the ability and present opportunity to summarize or add to them in any significant way. I only hope to point you, dear reader, to the good news that there is a loving God who sees you, knows your deepest hurts, and has powerfully and graciously set a finish line for your suffering.
One specific type of suffering I’ve walked through is now recognized on October 15, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I’m thankful for this awareness and support for mothers and fathers who have sunk in the cold, dark depths of a child’s death. Whether you held them with your arms for moments, months, or only with your eyes on a grainy ultrasound screen, willing their heart to beat again, it is heart-rending suffering. The pain is never erased from our memory, like the waves clearing our footprints as we walk in the sand. The loss isn’t gone, but God mercifully tells it, “This far, but no farther.”
BOUNDARIES TO OUR SUFFERING
God allows boundaries for our suffering both here and now, and in the promised eternal home he has prepared for us. Exactly how Jesus comforted my heart through my miscarriages is challenging to describe. I remember feeling his nearness and a surrounding peace in the midst of the scariest and saddest moments of the loss. It felt like being tossed in a series of waves, but never losing my bearings, because I could always see the solid ground beneath me. Healing doesn’t happen quickly. It also doesn’t start and end in clean, linear places. Suffering isn’t something that happens to us, leaving us with the task of “just getting over it.” Rather, it changes us, becoming part of who we are and how we operate in the world.
It’s incredibly tempting to focus on our own storms, putting on the blinders of only our own suffering. When we forget Psalm 121 and don’t lift our eyes to the hills, we also miss our brothers and sisters beside us, who likely are suffering too. We need one another, now more than ever, and we must offer each other that which we all need the most—the hope of the gospel.
It’s also tempting to equate duration and depth of suffering with the value of the thing we lost. Our culture sometimes cancels room for nuance. “Does saying that I had hope in the midst of my miscarriage make it sound like I didn’t love my baby enough?” I wonder. Can we enter fully into others’ suffering while still pointing them to the promise of God’s healing? Empathy and hope are not mutually exclusive, and nowhere are they more beautifully intertwined than on the cross of Christ. Any discussion about suffering and God’s mercy quickly drifts out to sea without this vital mooring: Jesus suffered.
OUR SYMPATHETIC HIGH PRIEST
Jesus suffered greatly in his life and especially on the cross, but it was all for a beautiful purpose. In the book of Hebrews Jesus is called our perfect High Priest. This title takes on depth as we read about the Old Covenant and law in Leviticus.
God, in his perfect justice and holiness, does not allow sin to go unaddressed—wreaking havoc in the lives of the people whom he loves and clouding his glorious reflection on the earth. So he mercifully established a system for his people to have atonement, or payment, for their sin. He set this system up for Moses, Aaron, and all the Israelite people after God brought them out of intense suffering in Egypt. After thousands of years of this system, with priests, ritualistic cleansings, preparation of various types of offerings, and reliance on animal’s blood as temporary atonement, God said, “No longer.”
He sent his one and only Son, Jesus, to rescue his people! Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection accomplished completely and forever what the old system could only point to and temporarily solve. The author of Hebrews says, “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come . . . he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” (9:11-12, ESV) And that mission of securing our redemption cost Jesus deeper suffering than we could ever know.
Not only did Jesus’s suffering atone completely for our sin, but it also made it possible for him to now empathize with us in our own. He does not stand aloof, asking us to walk a road he never experienced. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (ESV). He faced that unbearable cross with compassionate, sinless resolve to glorify the Father and to rescue us.
Jesus sympathizing with our weakness is not strictly tied to our times of temptation, though I am deeply grateful that he does that also. He’s sympathetic when we’re hurting, when we’re suffering. In his wonderful book Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, Dane Ortlund says:
How do we care for a wounded body part? We nurse it, bandage it, protect it, give it time to heal. For that body part isn’t just a close friend; it is part of us. So with Christ and believers. We are part of him. This is why the risen Christ asks a persecutor of his people, “Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). Jesus is comforted when you draw from the riches of his atoning work, because his own body is getting healed.
Do you believe that to be true? How amazing, and often difficult to believe, that Jesus draws near to us in every type of weakness! The writer of Hebrews goes on to admonish us, “Let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace in time of need” (4:16, ESV). Oh that we would trust him and run to him in our suffering.
COMFORT NOW, COMFORT FOREVER
God says, “This far, but no farther” to our suffering because of what Jesus accomplished on our behalf. Looking to Jesus, as Hebrews 12:1-2 exhorts us to do, is the surest, deepest source of comfort in our pain. Yes, we have access to many sources of comfort in suffering. In my suffering, comfort has often come via other people: talking about their experiences so I don’t feel alone, selflessly making meals or playing with my kids, or comforting me through physical touch, like giving hugs which we all miss so much! But similar to the old Levitical law, those things point to the truer and better. They were created by God to reflect him but never to replace him. They are forms and shadows, but Jesus is the true substance.
When we look to Jesus, we point our hearts, like the rudder of a ship, in a heavenward direction. We remember that suffering was promised to be a part of our experience in this world and that the One to whom we look has overcome it (John 16:33). Our truest citizenship is not tied to any country on our planet or represented by any flag. We are citizens of God’s Kingdom first and foremost, which changes everything, including where we put our hope in the midst of suffering.
We are comforted by God’s Spirit in our present circumstances, and we look with hope toward eternity with him. There will be no more suffering there, no more tears. Our hurt and our pain, which can seem to have no foreseeable end, will one day melt away. We will behold him in all of his glory and be with him forever!
You may never have experienced the loss of a child, but if you’re reading this, I know that you have endured pain of some kind. Even now you may feel like you’re in the deep end of suffering, just struggling to keep your head above water. Please, beloved, look to Jesus and trust in his finished work on your behalf. This message of hope is what “good” our words can do, not because of us, but because of Jesus alone.
Martin Luther’s famous hymn rightly reminds us, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. Our helper he, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.” No matter what waves are currently crashing in our lives, may we all find refuge and rest in our mighty fortress and perfect High Priest.
Myra Dempsey lives near Columbus, Ohio with her husband Andrew and their four children. She has an M.A. in Community Counseling and is an adjunct professor in the psychology department of Mount Vernon Nazarene University. She loves to write and teach about God's goodness and help others see the beauty of who he is and who he has created them to be. You can follow her on Twitter and read her blog.