Biography
The Rev. Dr. Benjamin Reaves has been a guest on 30 Good Minutes every year since 1989. He’s ordained in the Seventh-day Adventist Church and serves as Vice President of Ministries for Adventist Health System in Orlando, Florida. Ben is the former president of Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, and also served as General Field Secretary for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"The Doorway of Suffering" 
The video recorder of my memory plays it every now and then. It plays those scenes following my heart attack and a triple by-pass. It was a time of difficult days and sleepless nights. I remember during that time I was comforted by a metaphor. Metaphors can be helpful. Because they lie at the very core of human understanding, expressing an idea through the image of another object.

The metaphor is one used by Paul in I Corinthians 16:9 which speaks of “an open door is set before me.” It helped me to focus on the open door that God’s grace had set before me. The door of opportunity.

Now as I reflect on the subject of suffering, again I find a metaphor helpful. Some might suggest the metaphor of a furnace, a fire, or a flood. All or any of these could help convey understanding. However in struggling with the dark passages of life, for me that which reaches deep into my mind and heart is the metaphor “the doorway of suffering.”

Why use the metaphor of a doorway to talk about suffering? It could be because the doorway of suffering is one we all enter. A universal door through which all pass.

In part, modern media makes that painfully visible and unmistakably clear. Genocide in prime time. Disturbing images of death by famine. Heart wrenching stories, poignant portraits and the senseless agony of war. The horrific examples of living, breathing evil that show no regard for human life, resulting in unspeakable, unimaginable horrors experienced by helpless victims.

Technicolored suffering that refuses to remain a media generalization because it gets personal and insistent when you or a loved one suffers personally. Then suffering raises heightened questions of life, meaning, reality, truth and personhood. The hard truth is it’s unavoidable. It’s part of the human condition. The cup of life from which we all must drink. As the scripture warns “think it not strange.”

In addition, the metaphor is relevant for the doorway of suffering is unmarked. The unexpected factor. Out of the blue. You turn a corner, get a phone call, hear words of diagnosis and the sky caves in and the bottom falls out.

I could also find the metaphor meaningful for there are times the doorway of suffering seems like a revolving door, taking you from one pain to another in succeeding waves that offer no time to catch an emotional breath. The experience captured in the poetry of gospel music, “Been in the storm too long.”

All of these things could and should be said. However, the most essential thing is, although we have no choice about entering that doorway, we do have a choice about where the doorway of suffering can lead us. As we all know, and as some know only too well, the doorway of suffering can lead to disillusionment and cynicism, resignation and despair. A desolate canyon where our prayers rattle around in an empty echo,

In 1937, the English poet W. H. Auden published a poem “Victor.” In the poem, Victor is betrayed by his wife and as the verse tells the painful story:

Victor walked out into the high street.
He walked to the edge of the town;
he came to the allotments and the rubbish heap
and his tears came tumbling down.
Victor looked up at the sunset, as he stood there all alone.
Cried, “Are you in heaven, Father?”
But the sky said, “Address not known.”

The doorway of suffering can lead us into what appears to be a dead-end place where it seems our petitions for relief and deliverance come back unopened, unanswered, stamped “address not known.” The impact moves us beyond reflex questions of “why” to agonizing questions of “why me?” Compounded by, “O Lord, how long?” For the night seems to never end and the dawn to never come.

The doorway of suffering can lead us there or by our choice it can lead us beyond a seeming dead-end into another place, into a divine place, of intimacy with God that not only acknowledges but affirms the providence of God.

That lets God be God. For while explaining suffering has to do with ideas, enduring suffering has more to do with attitude. A faith grounded attitude informed by the God-given insight that suffering is not purposed but is purposeful, not imposed by God rather used by God for redemptive purposes. So that which could drive you from God can draw you closer.

We should not be confused by the blessed hymn, “I come to the garden alone and he walks with me and talks with me.” Well that’s not just for the fragrant, flower-filled garden. It’s also when I’m struggling up “the rough side of the mountain.” He is walking with me and talking with me, so that even under the unrelenting pressure of suffering, my suffering is shared by God. I am not alone. The pain and anxiety I can’t describe he shares and understands. I can endure not by summoning up some remarkable, personal courage but by resting in a divinely supporting presence and power.

With that perspective we can choose the place where suffering becomes a strength. Where the focus moves beyond “why” to “who.” Who is in charge? As Don Baker points out, Job asks “why?” sixteen times. In response to Job’s sixteen whys there are fifty-nine “whos.”

Job didn’t need to know why things happened as they did. He just needed to know who was in control. Moving from “why did it happen? to “who is in charge?” He needed, as do we, to let God be God, knowing the existence of things we do not understand and cannot explain does not render God powerless to use it for his purpose and our good.

That is demonstrated in what I call a “suffering symphony.” The lyrics to “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” were written by Joseph Scriven after his fiancé drowned.

“O Love that Will Not Let Me Go” was written by George Matheson after his fiance, discovering he was going blind, told him that she could not go through life with a blind man.

These words were written by Horatio Spafford in 1873 after his four daughters drowned in a collision at sea:

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll;
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
it is well, it is well with my soul.”

And to those the testimony of Benjamin Reaves in the words of Andrae Crouch:

“Through it all, through it all
I learned to trust in Jesus,
I learned to trust in God.
Through it all I learned to depend upon his word.”

Conversation with Benjamin Reaves

Lydia Talbot: Commanding, commanding spirit of your message, Ben. Enduring suffering has everything to do with attitude. I’m thinking of our dear friend, John Claypool, a guest on this show for many years, who recently died of leukemia. We asked him how he was handling his illness and he said, “With gratitude.” But aren’t there times when it’s also honest to rage against the suffering?

Ben Reaves: Honest and expected. And God understands that and God welcomes that because it’s through the struggle that we eventually find ourselves into the intimate place. I can testify to that out of my own experience.

Floyd Brown: I had that same experience in that I had open-heart surgery. My reaction was a little bit different from the ones that you said. I felt that it was interrupting my life. Why is this coming to me? All I could figure out was—of course, I was afraid at first—but then I thought, “How can I get out of this hospital? It’s interfering with my life!” I asked my doctor, “How can I get out of here in eight days and other people never get well?” He said it’s attitude.

Talbot: Don’t we often put God on the hook, Ben, for our own suffering when, in fact, only a suffering God can help?

Reaves: Oh, that’s beautiful, Lydia, and you’re right. A suffering God can help and he does help. And the point that I made about his presence with me, understanding what I can’t explain.

Brown: One of the things that happens here is that suffering is a life changing experience. A lot of people find God through suffering that had not done so before. Do you agree?

Reaves: Oh, absolutely. Suffering can help you change in your attitude toward people and also in your relationship to God. Suffering impacts in many ways and to the point where we thank God not for suffering, but for the effects and benefits that can be associated with the suffering experience.

Talbot: And, Ben, music helps the joy break through for you, I can tell.

Reaves: Oh, yes! That’s a big piece for me. I love to turn on my music, put on my earphones and then listen to the marvelous chords of grace.

Talbot: Thank you, Ben.