Consider this/ Einfach zum Nachdenken

A friend of mine has a big jar standing on his desk filled almost to the top with pennies. Whenever he comes home he empties his pockets of all his coppers and drops them into this jar. These little things are worthless and a nuisance, so he can’t wait to get rid of them. At the end of the year he goes to the bank and cashes them in: this never yields much, just enough for a kebab and a beer. But at least in great numbers these coins are worth something. Airlines have picked up on this and now provide envelopes through which you can dispose of “unwanted change” at the end of a trip; they collect it and pass it on to a charity. Often they don’t just get coppers, but whole pounds, Euros and even bills.

Unwanted change- what a Western concept, born of affluence and over-abundance! My African friends would never understand, for where money is scarce, ever penny helps. Even I learned a saying in German when I grew up: “He who does not honour the penny is not worthy of the pound”. Traditional societies and frugal people would never dispose of small coins carelessly, for they know that every little bit helps.

The Bible describes such a person: a woman (see Gospel of Luke chapter 15 verses 8 and 9) has lost a coin. It is not a copper she has lost, but a silver piece. It is one of ten pieces she possesses. Some commentators think in fact that this coin is part of a necklace which she received as a dowry, a piece of jewellery made of silver coins, to be kept for a “rainy day”, a reserve for difficult times. But now she has lost one of them, and she is seriously upset. She turns the whole house upside down in order to find it. And when she finally recovers the silver piece, she even throws a party.

Recently I was away on a weekend trip, and the morning of my departure I realized I could not find my sunglasses. This upset me: the glasses are prescription lenses and cost a lot of money. They were a gift from a friend, and there was no way I would be able to replace them. And they look cool, at least so I think! So I began to scour the whole room where I was staying, my car, my luggage, everything, just to find them. Being a Catholic I even prayed to St. Anthony- but nothing seemed to help. So I eventually gave up the search and resigned myself to the fact that I would have to be un-cool for the rest of my life. As I was leaving the building I passed by a fireplace, and there on the mantelpiece were my glasses. My heart leapt and I raced to get them. I felt too sheepish to tell all my friends, but in my heart I was throwing a party.

What is the point of this Biblical story? That God gets anxious when he loses a coin? That he misplaces his glasses like an old man? That he is not as frugal as my African friends? The story in Luke follows that of a lost sheep which the shepherd goes looking for, while leaving the ninety-nine behind; it precedes the famous story of the prodigal son. All three try to make the same point. God treats people like a treasured possession, not like dispensable items. So when one of us is lost, he goes through great lengths to go looking for us. In fact he never abandons the search like I did, he never resigns himself to having to do without; he searches until he finds. And when he finds the one who is lost, he throws a party. In God’s eyes, we are not unwanted change, cluttering his pockets. We are not something to be stored up in a jar, something which is only valuable in great quantities. Each of us is precious, and when we are not there something is missing. This is why he goes through great pains to recover us, even sacrificing his Son for it.


Imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she'll call her friends and neighbors: "Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!'

What is it about suffering that seems to have such opposite effects on different members of the human race? Some people, when they receive the diagnosis that they have cancer, fall into deep depression and blame the world for being unfair? Others decide to make the most of the time they have left, and enjoy every moment of it. Similarly 9/11 provoked a lot of anger and despair in some quarters since it seemed so unfair, so unnecessary, so inhuman. On the other hand many affected by the tsunami a year ago have gone on living and rebuilding their homes and villages, taking this big catastrophe in stride. Are some people more resilient than others when tragedy strikes? Or does suffering only bring to the fore what is hidden in our hearts all along, namely our notions of justice and fairness and what we expect from life?

The classic reading about this matter is of course the book of Job, since it raises the age old question why suffering exists, and how you respond to it. Job of all people seemed a very decent person and so, according to the popular notion that you get what you deserve, really did not deserve much hardship at all. Yet the story describes how one tragedy after another seems to visit his estate, his family and eventually his own body. Naturally his wife suggests it was time to curse God, for if he existed he clearly had lost the plot, or maybe was more than a touch unfair. The discussion goes on, until Job utters the famous words “Even though he slay me, I will trust in him” (chapter 13, verse 15). What does he mean by that, and how can a person who has undergone so much suffering say something so preposterous?


It has often been said that Christianity is a crutch, by which weak people or those in distress find solace in the myth of a loving God. According to this view God and his inscrutable ways are always invoked when there seems to be no rational explanation for events or facts of human life. But the problem with this view is that it clearly comes from people who have never suffered, for during a catastrophe a theoretical explanation about a loving God is no crutch at all, in fact it is a monstrous notion. If God is love, how can he allow suffering like the death of a loved one? What Job expresses, on the other hand, is something very different: he has somehow seen beyond the apparent absurdity and injustice of suffering and grasped that God exists and is still trustworthy in spite of it all. That is not a crutch, but “hope beyond hope”. Here we do not deal with theoretical notions, but with existential realities.

So what is it that Job has seen which can cause him to not curse God, but rather to express his unwavering trust in him? Three aspects are worth mentioning, as they form the basic pillars of the Christian understanding of suffering. First of all he seems to have understood that life is more than what we see. If we only look at the forty, fifty or sixty years allotted to man and assess them according to how much suffering they contained, we are missing an essential part: human life cannot not just be evaluated by its earthly part, but needs to be seen as continuing into eternity; and what happens in that second part is even more important than what occurred here on earth. To use the words of Paul of Tarsus in his first letter to the Corinthians: “if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied”. In other words life and suffering do not make sense unless we take into consideration that we are made for eternity, and whatever loss we encounter now is small compared to what we are promised in the afterlife.

Related to this truth is the second aspect, namely that suffering does change us, and even though painful it is not necessarily bad. Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist who survived the horrors of the concentration camps, discovered that suffering and difficulties challenge us to decide how we are going to respond. Far from condoning pain or wishing it upon anybody, he saw the same truth that Job had discovered thousands of years earlier: in suffering man is tested and refined, and as he responds rightly to it he grows into a free human being and discovers meaning in life.

Thirdly Christians believe that in Jesus Christ God himself came and shared the human condition, including pain and suffering. By so doing he turned suffering into something we no longer need to run away from, but something we can embrace because we know that we can find God in it. This is not Christian masochism, but the mystery of the Incarnation. Therefore every believer can repeat Job’s words: “Though he slay me, I will trust in him”, because in the most severe pain he can discover the presence and love of God. Those who do are truly free, for suffering and death can no longer scare them. This is why Christian men and women have endured pain, shame and even death in the service of God and of their fellow men. They have understood the paradox that giving is more blessed than receiving, that suffering can bring blessing, and that death of self leads to eternal life.