When not on vacation, my husband represents his fishing-related business at trade shows. He met an interesting guy who runs a non-profit organization called “Recycled Fish” that encourages anglers in stewardship of the environment. I particularly liked a quote on his web site, www.recycledfish.org, that talks about:  “anglers living a Lifestyle of Stewardship both on and off the water, because Our Lifestyle Runs Downstream.” This had been my very thought while contemplating the waterfall from the 9th floor solarium – our lifestyle does run downstream. It caused me consternation to think that the clean mountain water might end up in the dead Salt Lake. The parallel was obvious – I didn’t want my own life, at times fresh and vibrant, to end in a lake with no outlet – an unproductive, unfruitful lake full of salty tears of regret.

As a Christian, I believe I have access to the “living water” that Christ offered the Samaritan woman at the well 2,000 years ago. Any tears I shed I want to be tears of repentance that can be wiped away by the cleansing power of grace and forgiveness that Jesus gives to anyone who will receive it. Our lifestyle runs downstream, picking up all the pollution on the way. I like to think that who we are and what we choose to be to others can pass through a Divine Distiller that purifies our hearts and makes us palatable.  Jesus Christ is able to quench our thirst for meaning and value in this brief life. Sometimes we just need a little snow to remind us.

So how am I to treat the person who calls for money, who has been round all the churches that day demanding for their car insurance to be paid or they will go to jail, who keeps changing their story and whose husband is in jail, when I know that 90% of those jailed in our area are meth addicts? We don’t pay bills as a policy, but what is our response to be? We offer a life-changing relational budget program in which she can get out of debt permanently – she is not interested. We offer clothing and other material goods if these are needed – she just wants us to pay her bill. We pray with her and hope that we have sowed a spiritual seed.

Is it compassionate to feed someone and send them away with no hope of changing their circumstances? Is it merciful to give them money that will most likely pay for the next drug fix? I think that what Jesus did was provide for a need we all have – forgiveness of our sin and the gift of eternal life in heaven. He did not rain down dollar bills on the needy. In fact, before healing someone, he often forgave them their sins as the answer to their core problem, then healed them as a visible sign of His power to the unbelieving.

Perhaps the way to distinguish when and who to help is to ask the question of whether we are providing for a real need, or just getting them out of our hair and off our conscience by fulfilling the demands of the moment. If I were to ask this woman “what do you really need?” perhaps she would have to say she needs freedom from addiction, someone to walk alongside her and help manage her finances, someone who will not abandon her like her husband when he is paying for crimes he committed. Until she comes to that realization, it may be detrimental to perpetuate her situation, to keep her out of jail for a while, or worse, to feed her addiction. She will become dependent on the giver and return for more bills to be paid, not learning anything about her intrinsic value in Christ and how He wants to set her free from her problems, self-inflicted or not.

They call this ‘tough love.’ I find it hard to swallow. I am not yet at peace with it, maybe because I was never a parent. I want to solve all this woman’s problems, show her who she can be in Christ, soften her demanding tone of voice, get her off drugs or whatever it is that causes her to ask for money from a perfect stranger and be upset when she doesn’t get it. God’s heart must ache when He offers us the answer to all our problems and we turn away, rejecting Him, thinking we know how to run our own lives. The compassionate heart aches when mercy is rejected, but how many undeserving recipients are eager to accept mercy? It takes a brokenness of spirit, a humble attitude to receive something from the giver with genuine gratitude when you know you can never repay the debt. Jesus’s heart was touched when the one leper returned to thank Him for his healing. The other nine walked away and said nothing, but He did it willingly for all of them – this is unconditional love.

It brings up that age-old question of why there is so much suffering in the world. For a believer who trusts in the goodness of God, it is critical that we don’t confuse the issue with our emotions and lose faith.

I admit I was angry with God as a young person when a close friend died of a brain tumor after a lingering and debilitating illness. I remember walking along the road from the hospital talking out loud to God, choking back the tears, questioning Him with an ache in my heart and a million unanswered questions. It was the beginning of my walk away from God at an emotional level, keeping Him at arm’s length, slipping into isolation as a Christian as I eventually stopped going to church for years. The key component I had lost was trust, trust in God’s character. Had I misunderstood who God was? Filled with doubts, I was disillusioned, deeply saddened, but I threw the baby out with the bath water, not realizing the baby was me. I didn’t ever stop believing in God or Jesus, as I continued to debate spiritual questions with colleagues throughout my career, defending the faith, but with such a watered down testimony, I was no doubt totally ineffective.

Ironically, it was a series of sad things that happened in my own life that brought me to my knees, to full surrender and complete trust in God, beyond mere intellectual assent. Suffering is the refining fire that either breaks or makes us. It cannot leave us untouched or uninvolved with the deeper questions of our existence. It can cause us to look up for our salvation, or to hang our heads in despair. I hope that you will always choose to turn to the one true God in your life’s pilgrimage through the valleys of hardship. Like the starfish, keep clinging to the Rock when the waves come crashing down.

For some answers on the topic of suffering, I can recommend Dr. Ray Pritchard’s sermon: “Why is there so much suffering in the world?”