A week ago I stood at the entrance of Stutthoff Concentration Camp near Gdansk Poland, where countless souls passed to humiliation, torture and death during WWII at the hands of Hitler’s ruthless minions. As I read the accounts of their pain, and stood where they were actually brutalized, I realized again that I know very little of suffering.
Many of these dear souls were doubtless my brothers and sisters in the faith, who couldn’t just turn a blind eye to the malice against their Jewish neighbors, and others in Hitler’s sadistic disfavor. I wondered if I’d have been strong enough to stand with them. What an evil day that was!
In He 13:3 we are commanded to remember those who are suffering as if we are suffering with them. This high calling of God is not for the faint of heart; it takes supernatural strength to live like this. It is where God Himself dwells, suffering with His people. It seems to me an inevitable cure for all selfishness, arrogance, self-sufficiency, lukewarmness and hardness of heart.
Such evil days are upon us again, as many suffer under the brutal onslaughts of Islam. I ask for grace to connect with this suffering as if it were upon me, and if I live to see the same myself, that God will give me grace to suffer well, to walk worthy of Him, Whose goodness I cannot deserve.
Excellent.