Overwhelmed

Morning brings conversation with a hurting friend; later in the day the headlines convey distressing news locally, nationally, and internationally; evening at church begins with requests for prayer from the faith family, burdened for their loved ones and for the lost, representing yet another circle of struggling people. By bedtime, there hasn’t even been time to think about personal troubles.

Have you ever experienced a day like that? A day where you are met at every turn with more problems than you can help, more needs than you can meet, more hurting than you can heal? I know I have. And unless we are as hardened as a rock, it becomes difficult not to be affected by all that pain.

On a large scale we face famine, war, genocide, orphan crises, human trafficking, natural disasters, and disease. Then there are elections, legislation, court rulings, local crime, and violence. Closer to home, we may face embittered relationships, financial struggles, health issues, and workplace stress. And then, there are the ever-present multitudes of souls who are living day-in and day-out without the hope of Jesus.

Feeling overwhelmed yet?

As Christians, we are called to care. We are called to be compassionate, i.e. to be “with suffering” (Butterfield, 144). But we are also finite in our time, our energy, our strength, and our emotional capacity. The more suffering we observe and/or experience, the easier it is to try to block it all out, to ignore the pain—because how are we ever to deal with it all? And yet we are still called to care.

So how do we keep the crushing weight of all this hurt from paralyzing us?

     How do we manage to minister to the hurting without drowning in the sea of suffering ourselves?

          How do we bear the burdens of the whole world?

Simply put, we can’t.  But, thank God, we don’t have to.

You see, we were not designed to bear those burdens. We were not created with the capacity to carry the pain of the entire world. You think the suffering we see is overwhelming? Imagine how much more we don’t even know about!

Now think about the fact that God knows it all. Every tear that falls, every scream that pierces the air, every prayer for help that is uttered—He hears them. Can you imagine how oppressive that weight would be?

But that’s just it! It’s not oppressive to Him! It doesn’t overwhelm Him because He is infinite in power and wisdom. He is not confined to space and time. He is more than strong enough to bear the burden. David Platt says it best: “He alone has the emotional framework to perceive the world as he perceives it” (Platt, 251). That’s enough to overwhelm us in a totally different vein! Where we are impotent, He is able.

So when we start to feel overwhelmed by the pain we meet every day, know that we don’t have to carry it all. We can roll that burden off our backs and rest it at the foot of the throne of grace. And leaving it there in the arms of the Infinite God, we can rise to meet the suffering souls that He has caused to cross our paths. We can show them the love of Christ by giving what we have of our time and resources and by covering the entire interaction with prayer.

And as we do so, we can worship because the more we are met with hardship and pain the more we see God’s compassion and strength. Let us praise the almighty God who bears the burdens of the world and whose power is none depleted for it.

See the Arabic translation of this post here.

لقراءة الترجمة العربية لهذا المنشور إضغط هنا.

Citations:

- Butterfield, Rosaria Champagne. The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. Pittsburgh: Crown & Covenant Publications, 2012.

- Platt, David. Counter Culture: A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture in a World of Poverty, Same-Sex Marriage, Racism, Sex Slavery, Immigration, Persecution, Abortion, Orphans, Pornography. Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House, 2015.