I pray therefore that you may not lose heart over my sufferings for you; they are your glory

I pray therefore that you may not lose heart over my sufferings for you; they are your glory. (Eph 3.13)I’ve just finished a ten week intensive at Royal Perth Hospital called, Clinical Pastoral Education. It’s about learning how to do good, effective pastoral care. Significantly, good pastoral care is determinate upon knowing me. It’s in knowing myself and what triggers deep seated emotions and the driving forces that determine my ‘attitude of being’ with another person, that I can differentiate my story and what is happening in me - and authentically be with the other person; hearing and knowing what is going on for them.If you’re human you’ve experienced it; you share a really significant story about what’s going on for you and the other person just doesn’t get it. You know they don’t get it because they do something like, tell you a story of theirs about dinner out at a particular restaurant, for example, that bounces off the same basic subject matter - but that shares absolutely none of the feeling or meaning that you were experiencing in yours! And your standing there thinking - You just totally didn’t get it!’In today’s Ephesians passage, verse thirteen really stood out for me because I instantly started connecting the word suffering with the experience I’ve just had working in the hospital. I recognise that Paul’s context for suffering is pretty much always persecution; not really much of an issue here in the twenty first Century Western suburbs! However, the feelings associated with suffering evoked by persecution are universal experiences of every human being - feelings of disappointment, rejection, grief and anger; feelings of being lost, lonely or overwhelmed. Suffering is as real in our lives, and in the hospital context as it was in Paul’s - Different contexts, same feelings!And, in the same way the other person’s story sparks off my story (I’m so guilty of that!); in the context of Royal Perth I got totally swamped with my own feelings of brokenness, as I heard these patients stories of suffering. I got swamped with feelings of worthlessness, abandonment by God, of being so alone, profound rejections and real anger – of grief.It was in these encounters that so much of my dark past arose to stare me right in the face. I found that I was actually refusing to engage with the brokenness in the other person; I was refusing to sit there with them in the reality of that for them. Refusing to acknowledge their suffering and connect it with my own suffering and to be able to understand and empathise with them in their space. Because for me to actually hear and understand the other meant that I had to empathise with them, to share those feelings. And to share those feelings meant that I needed to acknowledge and face significant points of suffering in my own life. To acknowledge those points of suffering in my own life meant that I actually had to own the feelings that those experiences elicited in me; to own the consequences that my living out of those broken feelings caused in relation to others in my life. Ouch!The cross is about fully and totally entering into brokenness and suffering, in that it becomes fully redeemed. Likewise, Paul’s suffering was redeemed. It meant the glorious mystery that God has chosen us, you and me, to be His dwelling place, was amplified and projected to the world. Paul facing his suffering and fully experiencing and knowing those broken feelings in himself, meant he discovered transformation and resurrection. And the mystery of the presence of God who dwells with us in our lostness, brokenness, sinfulness, grief and pain became a reality to him and that brought him fully alive in the knowledge of the love of God, and liberated him to serve others.CPE became that for me; knowing God who is revealed in the suffering and humiliation of the cross; facing my own sinfulness as it arose in response to the brokenness of others; and seeing that transformed by the power of the mystery God is present in, and transforming my brokenness to liberate me in my service to others.[Nick Lockwood]