Only the suffering God can help – Bonhoeffer.

Near the end of WW2 a small scrap of paper was smuggled out of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Nazi prison cell.  He had been imprisoned for his participation in a plot to assassinate the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler; an imprisonment that led to his execution weeks before the end of the  war.

Bonhoeffer had scratched these words on the small scrap of paper, “Only the suffering God can help.”

Bonhoeffer is one of my heroes.  As a bright young pastor/scholar he left a comfortable academic post in New York to lead the Confessing Church, the faithful Christian resistance in Germany.  His life is a study in Christian social resistance.  His practical theology is captured in his best known book, The Cost of Discipleship.

He was a 20th century prophet and martyr.

I can only imagine what was on his heart when he wrote those six simple words from his cell.  It seems that at that moment, sitting in a deplorable prison cell, facing his own execution, seeing his beloved country torn apart by war and his dear church following the headship of the Fuhrer rather than her Lord, Bonhoeffer found comfort in his faith in a God who suffers.

Bonhoeffer realized that in his life he had a cross to bear.  There was no question whether he would take up his own suffering, only how he would do so.  In seeing his pain as necessary to his own discipleship, he redeemed it and knew the comfort of the God who bore the suffering of the cross for the sake of His people.  So he wrote in another place, “To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.”

We all have a cross to bear.  We all face suffering.  We, like Bonhoeffer, redeem our suffering when we allow our difficulties to press us into the real, living presence and comfort of Jesus.  His suffering was efficacious so that ours is never alone or in vain.

Don’t waste your suffering.

Rather, in your suffering discover the God who suffered too.  He is your help.