What are we
really doing to help one another in this life? Especially when times get hard?
There is so
much suffering in the world; so much pain. So much that if we were sensitive
enough to feel it all we would collapse from the pressure of it.
The ads on TV about standing together or being in this together, whether on the opioid crisis or after a natural disaster, are they truly coming from a place of care? However initially well-intentioned, too many campaigns and corporations are built on and run on crisis and disease being highly marketable. Why is all the money we throw at relief funds not creating any relief? The homeless are still sleeping on sidewalks, the elderly are still alone in their homes. The rich keep getting richer, meanwhile the poor and ill get left behind. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay "Manners", put it eloquently:
“What is
rich? Are you rich enough to help anybody?
“…to make
such feel that they were greeted with a voice which made them both
remember and hope? What is vulgar but to refuse the claim…? What is gentle, but
to allow it, and give their heart and yours one holiday from the national
caution? Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. The king of Shiraz
could not afford to be so bountiful as the poor Osman who dwelt at his gate.
Osman had humanity so broad and deep...there
was never a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane man…but fled at once to him;...it seemed as if the instinct of all sufferers drew them to his
side. Is not this to be rich? This only to be
rightly rich.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some things
like death are universal, a certainty not unexpected. But needless deaths,
needless illness and suffering…these are the things we can’t understand,
especially when they can be helped. All the other "progress" in the world can't make up for this lack of empathy. What is all the money, power
and knowledge in the world for except to help those who could truly benefit
from them?
Several weeks
ago, to my astonishment, I found in my vintage copy of Pilgrim’s Progress (antique
store purchase) a folded piece of paper with someone’s cursive handwriting flooding
the page. Someone had been writing about just this issue, but back in the 1940’s,
and I happened to have come across it in this way. There reads on the stationary
letterhead in embossed gold, “U.S. Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida.” Here
is what the Unknown man wrote,
“If we change conditions, will that Eliminate suffering?
If any good is to come out of suffering it must come first in changed people, not just in changed things. Suffering, by itself never changes conditions, but it can change people who in turn change things. Touching story of David’s great sin and of his suffering for it, (II Sam, 12:1-23 gives a perfect illustration of what can happen through suffering.Yes, if any good comes out of the suffering of this war, it must come through changed people.Men prophesy, what great material benefits will come after this war. Magnesium, automobiles, synthetics, the age of plastics, marvel of air transport, progress in the relief of physical suffering through great advances in medical science. All these material advances can turn out to be increased evils, unless changed people have learned through suffering how to live with one another. Mark Twain said, “_____”.It is well for us to look at one of history’s most often repeated lessons. The shores of human history are lined with the wreckage of nations who have developed the power to build things and have fallen short in the far more important task of building men.The chief bulwark of any nation—without which, all other bulwarks fail—is the character of its people, men and women who love justice so much they practice it, who love truth so much that they believe it in preference to lies.
----------------------He who did most for this world suffered most. He walked the way of loneliness, hardship, abuse, self-denial, suffering and—the cross.”
As the U.S.
Naval officer keenly saw, if there is to be any good, any meaning to come of all
the suffering, it must come through changed people. People who are changed (for the good) and
can make positive changes for those who need their particular care and attention.
We all have our different gifts, burdens and life paths. This means we also all have
something unique and worthwhile to give our fellow man.
So, are you rich enough to give of yourself?
