There’s no doubt that suffering comes to all of us sooner or later. Sometimes it’s just life: sickness, disaster, or death. Sometimes it’s our own choices that bring us suffering – we can call that sin. And it may be a bit of both: whose fault is the pain of a broken relationship, or a failure to achieve your goals? 

Isaiah presents a mysterious figure, known as the Suffering Servant in Chapter 50. Prophetically he asks us to consider the possibility that all suffering as focused on this Servant. Nonetheless, this Servant counts on God to upholds him, and helps him – he is not disgraced. 

Paul resolves, “to know nothing … except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” The death and resurrection of Jesus, the meaning of the Cross, has reshaped Paul’s whole life, including his suffering and death. In fact Paul teaches that the suffering of the whole world has been redeemed by Jesus, revealed to us as the Suffering Servant. 

The path of following Jesus is offered to you as an invitation, not a command. To follow him is to stay close to him every moment, to take every step he leads you into, to accept the whole journey as the only path that leads to your redemption. But we can also say that this journey is one we can share with others. We can invite people who may be suffering into this hard, but ultimately life-giving path. 

Have you ever said yes to Jesus’s invitation to follow him by denying yourself and taking up your cross? 

Where do you turn when you are suffering? Have you turned to Jesus who is with you in your worst hour? Would you ever invite someone else to say yes to Jesus?