In My Suffering I Can Believe

When Stephen Kumalo returned to his homeland of Ndotsheni in Alan Paton’s novel Cry, the Beloved Country, he described to his friend the tragic news from his journey to Johannesburg. His son Absalom, who had murdered a white man, was to be hanged. His sister Gertrude had abandoned her son and disappeared into a life of life of sin and sorrow in the city. And the daughter of Sibeko, for whom he had been tasked to find in Johannesburg as well, could not be found and the people who had last seen her did not care. To all of this the friend said, “Ah!... The world is full of trouble, umfundisi.” And then he asked Kumalo this question, “Yet you believe?” In other words, the question was, “And yet you still have faith in God despite these terrible difficulties?” Kumalo gave this profound response, “I believe. But I have learned that it is a secret. Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering. There is my wife, and you, my friend, and these people who welcomed me, and the child who is so eager to be with us here in Ndotsheni—so in my suffering I can believe.” In other words, we can hold onto our faith during great suffering because of the love and kindness of others. Kumalo had received great kindness and service from others during his difficult journey, and because of that he had kept his faith. The love he felt from others was more powerful than the pain and hurt these experiences had inflicted upon him.  

Perhaps the best way to help those who are suffering indeed is not to try to take away their suffering but to offer love and kindness to help them feel the grace of the Savior to lift them up. For Alma’s people the willingness to do this was the requirement of baptism: “Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life” (Mosiah 18:9). To truly follow the Savior, we must be willing to offer that “kindness of love” to those who mourn and stand in need of comfort. It struck me today that the people of Alma indeed needed to do just that when they found themselves all in bondage to the Lamanites. Despite their attempt to repent and live righteously, they were made to have afflictions that were “great” as Amulon exercised authority over them and persecuted them (Mosiah 24:10). But they did not lose faith as they poured out their hearts to God, and I have to think that in this time more than any other they did indeed mourn with and comfort each other as they had covenanted to do. And, of course, ultimately it was the Lord Himself who delivered them from their afflictions. His voice said this to them, “And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions” (Mosiah 24:14). Perhaps as we strive to show kindness and love to help others in their suffering, we help them to be more ready to receive His promised visit in their afflictions.    

The friend of Kumalo responded to him with these powerful words, “I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe the he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.” It is indeed inevitable as followers of the Savior to pass through suffering in this life, but He who “loved them until the end” showed us how to endure even life’s challenges (John 13:1). As we turn to Him in trials we can find the truth of Paul’s words, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:35, 37). Through the kindness and love of others we can hold on to faith and find that indeed no matter what happens to us, we are not separated from the love of Christ.