I have never been threatened. I have never been wounded. I have never been locked up. I haven't even been spoken rudely to because of my faith. And yet, I suffer in the name of Christ.
Time and time again the Bible promises us that as Christians we will suffer. Take Matthew 10:22, which says we will be "hated by al,l" for example; or James 1:2-4, which tells us to "consider it all joy" when we suffer.
As a child, this thought scared me. I tended to think of the people who were put in prison or even killed simply for speaking of Jesus. I had irrational thoughts of what kind of pain I would be able to endure and what would be asked of me.
As I grew older, I began to think that possibly there would be no kind of suffering in this age or that I was doing something wrong because I had never experienced that kind of suffering. Was there something I was missing?
Then I hit high school and began to understand that the kind of suffering I would experience would be unlike anything that I had imaged. And at first I was thankful, but now I see that it can still hurt. Maybe not physically, but emotionally.
The kind of suffering that I have learned to bear is that of being an oddity. We are called to be in the world, but not of it. This means that we do not conform to what everyone else is doing. And that can be painful.
Sometimes it means staying home from the party because you know what happens there. Sometimes it means letting friends go, because they just cause more harm than good. Sometimes it even means being all alone, when you would rather be doing anything else.
I'm not saying that it means you need to hide from problems or people, but there are some things that just aren't beneficial. As much as you want to be there or do those actions, you just can't. You can't because you're different.
Lately I have struggled with this kind of suffering. As a twenty-year-old, I never thought that I would be sad to go a few days without talking to friends or about not being invited to go somewhere. I assumed that this would be the time of my life when I would have it all figured out.
All I have figured out is that life never gets easier.
So while there is much suffering in the world, and I don't downgrade the suffering, I think it is important to remember that everyone suffers in some form. Each person will suffer differently based on their weaknesses and their situations in life. Sometimes it is persecution, sometimes it is being bullied, but sometimes it is something as simple as spending nights all alone. And it all hurts.
In these moments of suffering, we must remember what we feel now is temporary. Someday we will be with Jesus and that will make everything worth while.
