Jesus in our Suffering

Shortly before Christmas one year I woke up about three in the morning with an excruciating pain in one eye.  Neither eye drops or compresses helped.  My husband was recuperating from the flu and there were no Ophthalmologists in our small town. I decided to lie down in the living room and try to wait at least until time to dress to start out to our eye doctor in Nashville to wake my husband to drive me.  As I lay there praying for relief, I decided to praise God in this since I had read a book about praising in the hard things. I praised as each pain hit for several minutes and then sensed a presence by the window. A sense of incredible love was coming from it. It was overwhelmed by love and even though the pains kept coming, I began to praise with total joy. The love was worth the pain!  I continued praising joyously and finally simply fell asleep.  When the sun came through the window I woke up without any pain.  It never returned.

Another experience of sensing Jesus in a hard time was when touring a Cathedral in Prague. I was traveling in a wheelchair with my husband and son. The day we arrived for the first time in my life, I experienced rejection simply because I was in a wheelchair. Countries that had been under either German or Communist control were prejudiced against any sort of handicapped person.  Handicapped family members were kept out of sight, often even in attics. It wasn’t because I was an American.  When we got home, we even read about a family in Germany suing a hotel because their vacation was ruined by seeing a handicapped person at a near-by table at dinner.  They were awarded $20,000 by the German Court. Often the only handicapped bathrooms were in airports and MacDonalds. This was thirty years ago, so hopefully that has changed.

 I was only temporarily having to use a wheelchair, but when my husband was trying to get me out of the rain onto a covered sidewalk, several middle-aged women not only wouldn’t just move over a little to give us room, but as we had to pass them in the street one turned scowling and literally hissed at me. I felt crushed. Why would someone hate me when they didn’t know me?

That next day when we were touring the large ornate cathedral, my son wanted to climb the stairway to the top and my husband was trying to take photos of the ornate gold sarcophagus and the walls made with semi-precious stones. Crowds filled the cathedral, but we finally found a dark empty corner to park me in the wheelchair.  I could see the main altar which was marble and had a lot of gold candelabra but didn’t have the usual crucifix with Jesus over it. My son and husband were caught up in admiring the architecture and decoration and as I waited and waited, I became very down about being crippled and rejected and stuck in a dark corner by myself. Finally, I looked up behind me in my dark empty corner and there was Jesus on the cross. I remembered his words, “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me.” I was not alone. And never would be. Whatever we suffer, Jesus is suffering with us.