Yesterday was hard. My dressing protecting the infusion port in my chest started coming off in the night, so I resolved to be at the hospital at 7 am to get a fresh dressing. But I started getting night sweats in bed, a wicked headache when I woke up, and nausea with the first sip of morning coffee. I knew I was in trouble.
I shuffled my way to the hospital clinic for the bandage and asked them to draw blood. By that time I was feeling so badly that they shuffled me around the corner and started running tests. Blood drawn from my chest port AND my arm, nose swab for Covid, urinalysis, IV fluids, the works. By this point I was chilled, despite wearing T-shirt, sweatshirt, mask, and wrapped in three blankets. Eventually, they said my initial bloodwork looked good, the blood cultures for the other stuff would take 72 hours, and that I should go next door to the main hospital building to have my chest port removed. (Happy Day!)
The chest port removal required some injections of local anesthetic (Ow!) and a WHOLE lot of tugging but all ten inches of catheter eventually came out of my vein and they patched me up and sent me back to the Hope Lodge. I got in bed and started vomiting an hour later. By evening, I was mostly recovered. The migraine was no longer debilitating and I was no longer nauseous-- as long as I didn't attempt to eat anything! So, not hard suffering, but hard enough to ruin my day. It also got me thinking of Isaiah 53-- about the suffering of the Messiah.
Isaiah 53:3 in the New International Version (NIV) tells us:
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering...
I wonder, was Jesus ever sick? The bible doesn't tell us. It does clearly speak of his suffering on the cross, and also states in Matthew 4:1-2 that he suffered hunger: "Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry..."
Back in Isaiah 53:10, we read,
Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer...
So did Jesus suffer sickness? I personally think he did. He chose to be born a Man, and men get sick. Could He, as God, have healed himself? Certainly! Just like he could have called on 10,000 angels (Matthew 26:53) to prevent his arrest and crucifixion, but chose not to. Hebrews 4:14-15 tells us,
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
One of the many ways each of us are tempted is to blame God for suffering. In the first chapter of the Book of Job, his children were dead and his fortune was gone. Yet Job 1:23 tells us, "In all this, Job did not sin in charging God with wrong doing." Later on, God allows Satan to touch Job's body with sickness. Job 2:7-10 tells us:
So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and inflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then he took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.
His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!"
He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?"
In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
It is so very tempting, in the middle of our own pain and suffering to ask God "Why?" To tell God that this is so unfair! To ask what we did to deserve this! But such a response is based on a false assumption, that suffering is punishment for some wrong doing. And it CAN be, but that's not the norm. The norm is that suffering IS. It comes from living in a fallen world. A better response is to ask God for relief, and for Him to be with us and to USE us through this time of physical suffering.
But there are other types of suffering as well. I like reading key Bible passages in multiple translations because they offer different nuances which help my understanding. If we go back to the first passage I quoted, Isaiah 53:3, the NIV says "He was despised and rejected by men..." But The Message translates it, "He was looked down on and passed over..."
Have you ever been passed over for a promotion? Have you deserved something, and not gotten it? Have you been unrecognized for an achievement? Jesus grew up in the village of Nazareth in the unimportant province of Galilee. It had such a bad reputation that when Philip found Nathaniel and told him that they had found the Messiah (John 1:45-46), Nathaniel's response was "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Have you ever been judged - slandered- for where you are from? The wrong side of the tracks? Or maybe a little hick town instead of the big city? Jesus was.
Back in Isaiah 53:3, the King James Version (KJV) puts it:
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief...
What is grief? It is Grieving. Pain over loss. Have you ever lost a loved one and are grieving the memory of them? That pain is the deepest of aches, and can go on for years. Yet Jesus was acquainted with Grieving. And so he understands our pain, and can walk with us in this type of emotional suffering. In John 11:35, we find Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, and it says "Jesus wept." He is familiar with our grieving a lost loved one, for he too grieved a loss.
Rejection is another type of suffering. The second half of Isaiah 53:3 in The Message tell us:
One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
Have you ever been the recipient of this level of rejection, where someone you cared about physically turned their back to you so they wouldn't even have to look at you? I have. And it's devastating. Jesus knew this kind of pain also, and so he can walk with us in our suffering.
One of the themes of scripture is that Jesus is WITH us. That's what his name Immanuel means. "God WITH us." Not just with us in our triumphs and our happy moments, but with us in our Suffering. Our physical suffering from sickness. Our suffering from hunger. Our suffering from Slander. Our suffering from the malicious acts of others. Our suffering from lack of recognition. Our suffering from loss of a loved one. Our suffering from Rejection. He is Immanuel. God WITH us. Especially in our suffering. He's The Relatable God.
May you recognize the comforting presence of The Relatable God in your life today, no mater what pain your day may contain. And may He give you peace.
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