He sees

I think that as a human, one of the hardest things to do is to look at someone else’s pain, to truly witness their hurt, and not do anything about it. Sometimes we don’t want to do anything about it, sometimes we can’t do anything about it, and other times we could do something about it but we know we shouldn’t. I feel like I face these situations almost everyday. At times the pain becomes too much so I try to avoid it. I don’t look at the crippled old woman on the side of the road begging for change. I don’t make eye contact with the blind man being led around by a young boy who should obviously be in school but is instead serving as the eyes of someone else. Then comes all the self-talk that tries to make me feel better about it. “If you give to beggars, they will just keep begging.” “The better way to help is to build infrastructure that can actually build up the community as a whole so that they can help their own out of poverty.” And there’s always the old favorite “If I give her money I don’t really know what she will use it on.” These ideas are true to a certain extent in many cases, but for some reason I feel every bone in my body telling me, “just look her in the eyes.” I don’t want to do it, but I just feel like I should, and my conviction is strong enough that I finally turn and look her in the eyes. Then I think, “oh she’s got me now, I made the classic eye-contact mistake.” She comes over with her small child and asks me to buy her a sack of flour. Why did I do it? Why did I turn and look in her eyes? Once I looked into her eyes I saw a soul that was just like mine and I just couldn’t bear to see that soul suffering. I believe that whether I am talking about beggars on the street, or people that live around me and earn about a dollar a day, or people who feel rejected by society and rejected by church, I can’t make a decision about how to treat them until I have turned my eyes directly into their eyes and witnessed their pain, as much as possible. Not only does this witnessing help me to show them love in a better way, I think that the act of witnessing, in and of itself, is a loving thing to do. No one wants to suffer alone. A few weeks ago I went to the hospital after all the doctors and nurses had left on strike and there was a woman laying on the bed in the empty ward. One other woman was there with her, but other than that they were alone. The sick woman was groaning with every breath and clearly in so much pain. I could hear her groans as I approached the ward. What could I do? I am not a doctor, and I have no idea what’s wrong with her. I just sat by her bed and held her hand and prayed. I felt like I had just found someone left on the sinking Titanic but I had no way of getting her off. Do I turn around and walk away because it’s too painful to watch? Or do I hold her hand as she sinks into the water? Then there is the person who I could help but know that I shouldn’t. Well, I don’t really KNOW that I shouldn’t. Who knows these kinds of things anyway? It’s just a matter of accounting. If you give out money to everyone who comes along and asks you for it, there will one day not be any money left. On top of that, if you give to one person every time he or she asks that person will learn to depend totally on you and not make their own way in life. These facts are obvious. But when it comes to putting these things into practice, the lines become VERY blurry. How hungry is too hungry? How uneducated is too uneducated? How sick is too sick? How much financial burden and debt is too much burden? We are constantly making these decisions and it is exhausting. Wait a minute, this is my privilege. You either have enough to face these decisions, or you have so little that you are at the mercy of someone else’s decisions. I’m thankful, but it’s still so hard. So whether I decide to help or I decide not to, I will do the hard thing: I will watch. I will watch as they rise above and find their wings, or I will watch as they sink under the weight of the burdens life puts on them. But I will NOT walk away. I will NOT turn around or hide my eyes. Jesus didn’t come to earth and solve everyone’s problems. He solved a lot of them, but there were many many more that he left. If he hadn’t come to earth, maybe he wouldn’t have had to see it all and feel the heaviness of a world full of pain. But he came and he saw. This Christmas when I think about Jesus coming to earth, I am going to know that His coming means he has looked at me in the eyes and has seen my pain, every single time I hurt. He doesn’t always fix it or take it away, but he always, ALWAYS sees. No one is suffering alone.