The conference had ended, but we were stuck in our room for at least another night, unable to think how we might get home. My husband, Nick, was on his third day of barely functioning, confined to his bed, and I was starting to come down with sickness myself.
I began sorting through the dwindling bag of snacks we had brought. At the bottom, I spotted packs of ramen.
“There’s dinner,” I thought, as I started cracking noodles inside the package. We had no way to heat water, and I was in no condition to wander through the conference hotel looking for a different dinner solution, with four kids under eight.
“Isn’t this fun?” I exclaimed to the kids as I spread out a blanket for our hotel-room picnic. Our crunchy dinner from a stash of random snacks while my husband was seriously ill was certainly a low point.
The previous few months had taken a significant toll on us. Mounting difficulties faced our church-planting team in Germany. At this conference in Hungary, we hit a breaking point.
The God Who Comes Near
At the end of 2017, our young family moved from Beaver Falls, Pa., to an international neighborhood of Frankfurt, Germany, to join a multicultural church-planting team that would specifically minister among immigrants and refugees.
Initially, God had put on our hearts the incredible reality of Jesus moving toward suffering when He could have stayed out of it. In His incarnation, Jesus joined fully in the suffering of a sinful world while remaining sinless Himself. In His death and resurrection, Jesus conquered the power of sin in its myriad manifestations, defeating death. His ascension assures us of His reign over our broken world, even now. These truths compelled us to go.
In Matthew 28, Jesus gives both a reassurance and a promise, saying, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Jesus entered into suffering, promising to be with us in our suffering.
Since Jesus “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Phil. 2:6), Christianity is foundationally set apart from other world religions. In love, God comes near.
From the box-checking secular humanism of modern Germans to the box-checking Islam of devout Muslims—and truly, the default box-checking tendency of every human heart—there is continual distance, continual striving. Jesus ends these cycles of striving, and “none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned” (Ps. 34:22).
As missionaries, we intended to follow the example of Jesus by entering into some of the particular suffering of refugees and to hold out a message of hope in Christ—the God who comes near.
No Exemption from Suffering
God’s presence was evident in our work with Muslim-background believers and seekers. The words of Adam Muhtaseb rang true in what we saw in our friends: “When Islam choked me with ‘Do, do, do,’ Jesus said ‘It’s already done’ and captured my heart.”
It was a privilege to come alongside these friends who, in some cases, had never heard the gospel before or even met a follower of Jesus. We had been told that “everybody wants to be the harvester,” and, spiritually speaking, we were sometimes only a plow. Yet we also joined in the joy of new believers trusting Jesus for the first time, sometimes at immense personal cost.
One of these friends ended up stuck in Germany just after we were stuck at the conference. We had two men already living in our home at the time, both newer believers from a country closed to the gospel. A brother of one of the men came from his home country to visit for a few days while on business, right as we were leaving for our conference. I tucked away some last-minute ramen and ran to grab our new guest a sleeping bag.
First due to business delays and then COVID-19 border closures, this man stayed for two months at our house, where he encountered the good news of the gospel and put his faith in Jesus.
To this day, this man is the most enthusiastic new believer we’ve ever known. One day he came from his room, disappointed that it had taken him three days to read the entirety of the Psalms—he had been aiming to read them in two.
As a result of coming to faith and entering the joy of salvation, this man’s life was turned upside-down, sealing an already uncertain fate in his home country.
Can’t Skip Over Suffering
It takes courage to follow in the steps of Jesus and enter fully into the fear, doubt, and uncertainty of suffering, leaning hard on Him. Do we believe Jesus really holds up?
We more naturally back away by offering simple platitudes—even truthful statements—that try to quickly resolve the discomfort of others’ suffering. Or we may seek to minimize the impact of suffering, glorifying it somehow or getting twisted as we try to call bad things good. These reactions unintentionally deny an exploration of God’s presence in suffering.
When we allow ourselves to enter into the depth of grief and loss in suffering, we better “know Him and the power of His resurrection” (Phil. 3:10). As Cathy Loerzel says, “There is no resurrection without death.” We can’t skip over suffering.
Don’t be deceived: the promise and presence of Jesus does not erase the immense pain of suffering. Yet He is near to us in suffering: “I would have despaired unless I believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps. 27:13). God is not far off, and that makes all the difference.
God’s Presence in Hard Providence
While we were in Hungary, we faced debilitating illness, and we also got word that the problems in Frankfurt had escalated, and our team had imploded. The way God cared for us through His people minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day from then on was the tangible expression of His presence with us in suffering.
A family I met the first day brought us groceries after the conference had ended.
A family we’d only briefly met opened their home to us, half a day’s drive away, because we couldn’t make it the full day back to Germany.
The conference doctor, coming from a small Kansas town (with connections to RPs!), gave routine medical advice earlier in the week, then stayed in touch, helping diagnose Nick’s ongoing illness after we had finally returned home.
The doctor’s wife demonstrated the qualities of the God Who Sees (Gen. 16:13), looking after me, helping with our kids, and setting up a meeting with counselors for us.
The counselors who were serving at the conference took time with us, first in person and then virtually over the next two years, as they helped us navigate treacherous territory into a fuller understanding of the gospel, which we then offered onward to our refugee friends.
In Germany, we were well supported to continue, even with no remaining teammates, as we served the bride of Christ like bridesmaids absorbing the stress of a wedding. God provided care and support through our families, our friends, our prayer team, our counselor-mentors, our home session at Eastvale (Beaver Falls, Pa.) RPC, and our German pastor-partner from an established church in another part of the city. We always received exactly the encouragements we needed, exactly as we needed them—like manna, only enough for the present. God, through the care of dear brothers and sisters in Christ, preserved and sustained us.
The Way It’s Always Been
Looking back on my walk with Christ, He has always used relationships to “hem me in, behind and before” (Ps. 139:5). Growing up, I had elders who took time to know me and value me, while young moms in the church earnestly prayed for me and checked in. God used friendships from presbytery youth retreats to become lifelong touchpoints of spiritual encouragement, broadening my understanding of Christ’s body.
Through times of doubt, especially in grappling with multiple unexpected deaths in high school, or accounts of devastating abuse that surfaced in college, God held me in comfort and in truth. At other points, I had friends who “held up [my] hands” (Exod. 17:12) in faith when I simply couldn’t; through them God gave me refuge and rest. Jesus holds up.
Even recently as big questions of life in a fallen world have weighed on me again, God has shown me His care: the well-timed text from a friend who couldn’t have known my current wrestling, or the providential conversation of precise encouragement in the grocery aisle at the end of a troubling week.
When it comes to noticing God’s presence with me, I know I can look forward because I’ve looked back. Ultimately, my testimony is this: In moments of fear, doubt, and uncertainty, God has provided reassurance of His presence and care through His people.