Setting up Camp: Part 2

Shortly after my 39th birthday, I started experiencing chest pains on a somewhat regular basis. I wasn’t sure exactly what was causing them, but I know I had reason to get it checked out. My paternal great-grandfather died of a heart attack in his mid-fifties. His son, my paternal grandfather, died at 56 from heart attack number three. My dad had heart issues in his mid-fifties that resulted in a few procedures and his brother had his first heart attack right around 40. So, as you might guess, with that stellar family cardiac history, I was concerned. So, I had a stress test done – the nuclear stress test, where they inject a radioactive tracer and do some imaging, have you run on the treadmill and do more imaging afterward.

Now, truth be told I was feeling pretty good during the actual test. Earlier that year, I had run my first marathon, so the running on the treadmill was great, and better still it was free of chest pain. When I walked back to talk to the radiologist who walked me through the images of my heart, he showed me where some blood vessels looked thinner after the running than before the running, and then he said, “That’s not what that’s supposed to look like. I’d like to run another test.” This was not the news I was expecting to hear. I inquired about running, as I was planning to complete marathon number two in a few months and was just getting ready to start amping up my mileage. His response: “No. No exercise for right now. Let’s get the other test scheduled first.”

What? Last I checked, “do not exercise” is not what the heart doctor is supposed to say.

To shorten the story, the subsequent test was a virtual cardiac catheterization, which was essentially a CT scan. That gave me the all clear, the chest pains were chalked up to stress, and I was allowed to start running again. But it doesn’t change the fact that during the six weeks between the first test and the second, I walked through life feeling like a ticking time bomb. I read every food label. I was constantly paying attention to how my heart was behaving. I had some fear, connected to a situation beyond my control, which wasn’t going away anytime soon. In the last post, we talked about where not to camp. Today, we turn our attention to how to deal with it when we are forced to campout and spend time in challenging places.

While I was fortunate, and my camping time was only six weeks, others have a time frame that is much longer, with stressors that are more severe. From losing a loved one, to receiving a devastating diagnosis, to seemingly impossible situations at work there are multiple causes for our interpretations of the challenges life can throw at us. Usually, when we find ourselves forced to camp out in challenging places, we are experiencing one of five causes.

1. Because we can’t see a pathway forward
2. Because we are dealing with heartache
3. Because we feel like the world is against us
4. Because life seems overwhelming
5. Because we feel trapped

In every one of these conditions, we begin to feel isolated and alone, and it is easy to forget that we serve a risen Savior who is bigger than all of these conditions and who is always there for us. In other words, it is imperative for us to see our challenges against the backdrop of the cross and with the perspective that the God we love and serve who first loved and served us wants to strengthen us and have us walk near Him as we endure crisis (both in the immediate and the long term). Or, as Paul states it in 2 Corinthians 1, He is the God of all comfort.

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. ⁵ For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.^[a]6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. ⁷ Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

2 Corinthians 1:3-7 (ESV)

As we read through 2 Corinthians 1:3-7, we see a picture of a God who wants to be there for us and help us to feel better in times of trouble, but there is a deeper reality and meaning here. The word parakaleo is more often translated as “encourage” or “exhort” rather than “comfort”. But here, we have comfort appearing ten times in this short passage, and the meaning is further obscured by our usual American English understanding of comfort.

As I read the word “comfort” and being a Lord of the Rings buff, I can’t help but think of the line from the beginning of the movie Return of the King where Pippin responds to Gimli saying, “We are sitting on the field of victory enjoying a few well-earned comforts. The salted pork is particularly good!” The idea that comfort means, “something that makes me feel good/better” is the predominant understanding today, but it was not necessarily the primary meaning as Paul wrote it within a Greek context. At that point, it carried more of the understanding of exhortation and internal strengthening. In other words, when we hit times of trouble, we can lean into the, “God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Cor. 1:3b-4).

Notice the twofold understanding here: both the horizontal and vertical elements. Just as Jesus commands us to love God with everything we have (vertical) and love others like we love ourselves (horizontal) in the greatest commandment, here Paul reminds us that in our suffering, we can experience a spiritual strengthening and encouragement from God (vertical) and then turn and use that experience to come alongside others (horizontal). Also notice, this immediately fights against the isolation and loneliness it’s so easy to feel in these times.

This is the beginning of theology of suffering: that we recognize at least a two-fold purpose in facing challenges. They are opportunities for God to show Himself to us as the God of all comfort, so that we can learn to lean into Him in all things, and that sufferings are faith and hope growth opportunities for us, so that as James tells us, we may become “perfect and complete.” When we are forced to live in the trials of life, we share in the sufferings of Christ, and as we lean into the Father, we become more like Jesus as we grow in faith as we trust God to comfort us and bring us peace in times and places where comfort and peace don’t make logical sense, which enables us to minister comfort to those around us. However, we must understand that we do not simply jump in at this point. This starts with camping in the right places beforehand, so that when the trials come, we are rested and have gained the resources we need so that we are prepared; a topic worthy of our attention, and the subject of the next post in this series.