Helping the Hurting
What is the best way to care for people who are in a crisis of pain? This is one of the questions we are most commonly asked by people who genuinely want to love well but are unsure how to engage people facing a life catastrophe of deep challenge, hurt or broken-heartedness.
When we know someone who is at a point of devastation over life’s circumstances, we can experience the tension of wanting to help but also feeling powerless, unequipped or awkward. We might fear saying or doing the “wrong” thing or we’re afraid it will be too emotionally taxing. The truth is…when we genuinely stand beside the broken we will likely feel all those things. We are, indeed, powerless; caring for people facing a crisis of pain reminds us of the messiness of life, it highlights our own helplessness, and underscores how much we are not in control of life’s circumstances. Helping the hurting requires sacrifice…
But…
In our willingness to feel all those tensions and still reach out in love, we might find ourselves blessed in unexpected and uncommon ways.
Scripture tells us that God is close to the brokenhearted, and Jesus spent his ministry caring for the broken. As we reach out in love, not necessarily by doing or saying the right things, but by actually caring enough to deeply feel the pain of another, we are likely to find God close, moving and working in ways otherwise unavailable to us. When we choose to selflessly enter the heartache of someone else’s suffering, God is there.
Isn’t it amazing that by loving someone in their heartache we might find ourselves at the center of what God is doing, not only in them, but in us?
Learn tangible ways to help…