The Lesson of Suffering: Faith. Hope. And Love.

by Kristin Jack

According to Richard Rohr, only two things in life are truly transformational: great love or great suffering. I think he’s right.
One of the reasons Susan and I joined Servants and moved to Cambodia all those years ago was an intuitive understanding that by moving out of the affluence and ease of life in New Zealand, and moving in among the poor in a war-torn nation, we would grow. We knew that this new life would force us to grow deeper in our faith (that is, trust) and spirituality and deeper in our compassion. Either that or we’d have to skedaddle home as quickly as we’d left it! I suspect it’s this same understanding that has lead a lot of us to join Servants and leave the comfort of home.
Of course, the idea that suffering produces depth and compassion in us isn’t an inevitable, linear relationship. James says to “consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of any kind, because you know that this testing produces perseverance” (James 1:2-3). Well, yes, but only if we let it. Like wise Paul says “not only do we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, character and (ultimately) hope” (Romans 5:3-4). But again, only if we let it. As has been observed so often, every suffering, failure or set-back can either make us better or bitter, depending on how we process it. We saw this with our selves, we saw this with fellow Servants-workers, and we saw this in the lives of our neighbours too.

Of course, the “suffering” we experience when we immerse our selves among the poor is different in both quality and quantity from that of our local friends and neighbours. At no stage did Susan and I think about giving up our New Zealand passports, and so we always had a kind of a ‘get out of suffering free’ card, something most of our friends and neighbours never had. I say kind of, because relocating physically/geographically away from places of pain doesn’t necessary mean you leave it behind. Pain, like joy, are as much internal states as they are external conditions.
Amongst our neighbours in Chbaa Ampou in Phnom Penh, the person we most saw all this most worked out in was our friend Om Khuen. A deeply sincere Buddhist, she was the most gracious, caring person we knew in our community. And yet, there was no earthly reason she should have been. She had suffered, like most Cambodians, enormously under Pol Pot’s regime. Moreover, she’d been press-ganged into a forced marriage by the Khmer Rouge, and was trying to make the best of it even though he was a hopeless alcoholic, more often drunk than sober. She worked hard, running a shanty ‘grocery store’ in our slum (really a bamboo bed with a tarp strung over it), but never made any money – mainly because her clientele were so poor, and out of her big heart she kept extending them credit. She struggled almost single-handedly to keep her family of three girls and a boy together. And then, during our first year in Cambodia, another horrible tragedy struck her family. Vibol, their son and oldest child at 21, the apple of their eye and as an apprentice gold-smith, part of their hope for a better future, was murdered. Not far from where we lived, he’d been mugged for his motor scooter, and had fought back. He was stabbed multiple times and bled to death.

Life moved on, as it always does. But below the surface, deeper things were putting down roots in Om Khuen’s heart. One day, seven years after that horrible murder, Om Khuen dropped by to see us, her voice quivering with emotion. She told us that after all these years of observing the Christians in the village, how they behaved, and of weighing it all up, she had decided she wanted to become a follower of Jesus too. We were of course, both thrilled and stunned. But then, a few weeks later, our excitement over Om Khuen’s decision – and our respect for her as a person – grew even greater.
Om Khuen had been eagerly attending the cell group (Bible study) gatherings in our neighbourhood, and one evening Om Kheun dropped in to share with Susan and I something she believed God has spoken to her. She had read in the gospels that Jesus calls us to forgive those who have wronged us (to forgive their debts). With this new insight, she had examined her heart and found that there was something tainting her relationships in the village. Over the years she had extended so much credit to other families that it now amounted to hundreds of dollars (a huge amount in a little slum economy). Om Kheun realized that she felt angry and frustrated with those who owed her so much, because she would be so much further ahead in life if they paid their debts. But she also realized that those poor families were deeply ashamed of the debts they would never be able to repay, and they avoided her as much as possible. She neither wanted to feel bitter, nor be avoided. Inspired by what she read in the gospels, she decided to wipe the slate clean. Taking her record book in hand, she went from family to family, and before their eyes drew a line through their debt, declaring it ‘forgiven.’ At the stroke of a pen, they were set free – and so was she.

Over time, God did deeper and deeper work in Om Khuen’s life. Eventually, her husband drank himself to death. His body simply packed up, and a series of strokes took him to a premature grave. Om Khuen began to nurture her passion for cooking (one Susan and I benefited from as she sometimes dropped experimental dishes around for us to try), and she got a series of jobs in restaurants, each one classier than the one before. Her talent and character was being recognised, and eventually she even ended up doing cooking demonstrations on national TV! But her character and talent eventually got her noticed in another sense too. In one of the restaurants she worked in, an older, dignified Khmer gentleman (a widower) became a frequent customer. A big bear of a man, he had once been the Cambodian national basketball coach, way back in the 60’s, when the country was peaceful and relatively prosperous. He had the chance to emigrate to the United States, where he had a son working as a doctor, but has returned as he loved Cambodia and found life in the US perplexing and unattractive. After a period of respectful, gracious courtship, they became a couple. Susan and I were delighted to see Om Khuen ‘romanced’ by this gentle, caring man. It seemed so much like what she deserved after all the years of hardship she’d endured with her first husband.

As I think about Om Kheun’s life, it seems to me that she exemplifies the principle that transformation can only be bought about by great love or great suffering. For most of her life she’d only experienced the second of these. But she’d had never let it fully defeat her – she just kept persevering, in the hope that one day life would get better. And then in these latter years, she found the ‘great love’ part of the equation, and embraced it with that huge heart of hers that had been so prepared by all that had gone before. Or, more accurately, by her response to all that had gone before.
Over the past year of so, as I’ve faced the diagnosis of lymphoma with its uncertain prognosis, and then nine months of gruelling chemotherapy, I have drawn so much inspiration from lives like Om Khuen’s. From people who have endured far more suffering than I ever will, and who never stopped persevering and who never gave up hope. Right near the beginning of my treatment, I felt God speak to me and say, that no matter what happens, I was to keep living ‘with faith, with hope, and with love’. This was something I saw in the life of our friend Om Khuen, and it is something I want to live out too.