Looking Away (Friday Devotional)

“You who fear the Lord, praise Him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify Him; stand in awe of Him, all you offspring of Israel! For He did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; He did not hide His face from me, but heard when I cried to him.”

- Psalm 22:23-24

Sometimes you just have to look away. If you’re squeamish, that moment may come at the sight of blood or a broken bone. If you’re overwhelmed, it may happen when your desk is piled high with paperwork. If you’re easily embarrassed for others, maybe it’s when you’re watching a performer bomb on stage. And if you’re tenderhearted, perhaps it happens when you open a Time magazine at the doctor’s office and are confronted with images of impoverished and embattled refugees.

Whatever prompts them, we all have those moments when, confronted with supreme anxiety, the only comfortable option seems to be to take a “see no evil” approach. By simply averting our eyes, we’re able to, if not avoid the situation altogether, at least reduce its immediate personal impact. Looking away doesn’t actually make anything better, but at least for a moment you feel better.

But when you look away, you lose sight of more than just an uncomfortable situation—you willfully neglect your responsibility to your neighbor. Just because you can’t see the blood doesn’t mean the bleeding has stopped; while you’re more comfortable, they remain in agony. Looking away makes you feel better when you’re a bystander, but if you were the one suffering, it’s the last thing you’d want others to do.

What a comfort then to know that the Lord never averts His eyes from suffering. While we fall prey to looking away when things get too rough, God does not hide His face. While we too often plug our ears when screams become too shrill and too frequent, the Lord hears when we cry to Him. While our hearts are easily hardened, He does not “despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted.”

Never did this become clearer than when God sent His only Son to this world. Jesus didn’t shy away from the sick, the outcasts, and the sinners of his time—no disease was too disgusting, no suffering too severe, no iniquity too unpardonable for him to offer compassion to the people carrying those burdens. Far from avoiding their agony for the sake of his own comfort, Jesus reached out to them with the love, healing, and forgiveness of the kingdom of God. And ultimately, he did more than see their suffering, more than empathize with it, more even than attend to it—on the cross he embodied it. We look away when others’ pain becomes too great; Jesus took that pain upon himself.

Suffering is one of life’s awful realities, a burden that can seem too great to witness, much less to bear. Sometimes it’s easier to just look away. But our Lord never does, and His disciples shouldn’t either. Empowered and emboldened by His Spirit, infused with His love, may we respond to suffering with the courage and compassion of Christ, reaching out instead of looking away. The world may not always be a pretty place, but the answer is not to ignore or avoid its ugliness—the Christian alternative is to respond with the beauty of grace.