The passing of a friend, an outpouring of tears, a confession of weariness, an enduring wound that refuses to heal….without suffering, life is incomplete. Suffering is as certain as the death that awaits every person, and as frequent as the bursts of joy and contentment that life gifts us, for God is the same in sadness, strife or song. For if we think God has forgotten us in one season, then more likely we have forgotten who He is like regardless of seasons.
I used to read the Readers’ Digest, mainly for the “Laughter, the Best Medicine” section. Suffering is just as potent as laughter is for the soul. Those who have been through those dark nights of the soul can attest to that. But suffering is also good for another thing – service.
Suffering and Public Service
Some time back, I shared my thoughts about what it means to be in public service. The spirit of public service transcends all, whether one calls oneself a public servant, a civil servant, or a citizen striving to do good to a fellow citizen. (You can read about that piece here, if you are interested.) An essential fuel for that sort of deep service to the public is suffering.
Public Spiritedness is Not Enough
What do I mean? There is more to public service than just altruism. Being public spirited is only a tiny tinder from which one acts for public good. Public spiritedness allows one to start something, to burn bright for a moment. But like tinder, the fuel does not last long and the flame, though bright, does not endure the shifting winds of change and the howling gales of opposition. It takes a certain type of deep, glowing, obdurate ember to keep the platform burning long enough for lasting change to finish its course. That sort of fire is fueled from suffering.
Suffer to Serve
To be a true servant to the public, one must suffer firsthand injustice, hardship, and dislocation from the mainstream. One must know intimately what it means to be marginalized, ostracised, isolated and forgotten. Only then can one connect with the outer reaches of this wide spectrum which we call the public. For the prudence of public policy skews one to attend to the reachable 95.44 percent of a normal distribution (or 2 standard deviations from the centre). Within this wide swath, public servants already struggle to meet the diverse expanse of needs. (For within this spectrum, some are still underserved. Others are self-sufficient and not in need of service, yet are receiving unnecessary service nonetheless. Yet others are hyper-served, because they are available, visible and such a joy to serve!)
Move out of this wide swath, and we encounter the hidden ones. These are the ones who refuse to be served, are too invisible to be served, or are simply too hard for one to understand how they can be served. If the public servant does not intentionally reach out, and suffer with them, how then can these hidden ones be drawn out? The heart that is not made pliable through suffering cannot find resonance with these secret ones. With these, they must first see our scarred and seared hearts before they would open up to their own wounds.
All this is to say that a suffering soldier is a better healer to the wounded and wasted than any coifed and crisply ironed civil servant. To serve such as these, one must first learn the way of the towel and pan. To approach the lame and leprous, one must first be adorned with a familiar anguish.
The Inner Journey That Leads to Service
This evening, as I penned these words, a friend came with a need. I reached out, but not as a psychologist, or as a church friend, or as a public servant. Instead, I reached back in, looked deep at my own ugly, sin-filled soul, and allowed myself to be led back out by God’s nail-pierced hands. That inner journey I just made would hopefully be the same journey my friend can learn to undertake on his own. I know it is possible. And it gets easier each time. For I’ve had much practice making that journey over the years.
And that’s how I know that without suffering, it is impossible to serve.
