When my father was killed suddenly in a car accident many years ago, a dear pastor friend came to the house to comfort my family and me. Under the shock of this tragedy, as I supposed, I had fallen ill, and thus I remembered little of his kind visit with me. However, I did remember his sharing this Bible passage: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God" (2Co 1:3-4). About this Word of God, he counseled me that now as a parish pastor I would understand better the grief of those under my care, especially if they had lost a father. I had been through this affliction, and so I would be able to comfort other persons with God's comfort which I had received from my friend.

Of course, the Apostle Paul means something more than, "Oh, your father died? I lost mine a few years ago. I know exactly what you are going through." No, it cannot be that any person is able fully to fathom the grief felt by another. Paul is not merely sympathetic. He is not claiming to be able to feel the same thing as those who are afflicted. Paul is not a cheap politician who claims, "I feel your pain." What good would come of that? Paul's willingness to suffer had to do with understanding the comfort that the Lord gives to the afflicted, rather than understanding the affliction of another. We might rightly say to those who are suffering or grief ridden, "I may not know exactly what you are going through, but here is what helped me when I was afflicted by grief." This kind of spiritual humility goes a long way to get you a hearing from those who suffer. We must reject the arrogance that claims to know the depth of the suffering of others. If you do, you will be able to help, rather than hurt.

What the Christian knows about suffering, is not that it will go away according to our timetable, but that it enables us to experience the compassion and rescue of the God of mercies. This God offers His Son into suffering and death and does not rescue Him except through suffering itself (Heb 12:2). We have a God who was willing to drain down to the dregs the cup of suffering rather than flee from it (Lk22:42). We have a God who was willing to be identified by the name of an object of torture and worshiped as the "Crucified" (1Co 1:23). God's abundant mercy shapes and drives His desire to save us no matter the cost in suffering. If He so suffers, what would make us think that we could, or even should, avoid it.

We experience the compassion of God while we are suffering, not apart from suffering. So, we, like Christ, ought never to avoid suffering, but welcome its approach as a cross from a loving heavenly Father, who desires only the best for us. Then we will know the compassion of God. John Chrysostom pointed out that the three children of Daniel were brought rescue while in the fiery furnace, rather than be rescued from the experience of immolation on the bonfire of a king's vanity. The Son of God sustained them by sharing the fiery furnace with them. Therefore, our comfort comes not through freedom from suffering but from the freedom to suffer with Christ, the Son of God.