Your grandchildren are going to suffer. You may not like that, but it is true.
Suffering in some form is inevitable. Young children endure earaches, tummy aches, bumps, bruises, mumps, and measles. Grandparents experience arthritis, gastritis, bad hips, bad knees, feeling very cold, or being uncomfortably hot. Our grandchildren see us experience all of it. They observe our suffering and they will likely watch us suffer even more as we age.
Learning how to handle suffering well is one of the most important lessons in life. Mom’s and dad’s suffering is mostly invisible to their children. Grandpa’s and Grandma’s are more obvious. We limp and cough and groan when standing up. Since we cannot hide all our aches and pains, can we use our sufferings to teach our grandchildren something about the nature of God? How do we do that?
In conversations with older grandchildren, we can tell the truth. God has not made anything useless in this world. God is both wise and kind. Although suffering is difficult to comprehend, there must be a reason for the suffering we endure and if Jesus was willing to join us in our suffering, suffering has to make sense. It has to serve some purpose for him and for us.
Jesus stepped into our nature. He took suffering on himself, carrying all of our sin, all of our sorrows. He is not a distant God. He is right with us in our suffering. He is a God of compassion and he works through our suffering to accomplish something good – either for us, for others, or for both.
The second way to help your grandchildren with suffering is to sing with them. There is a beautiful old African-American spiritual about suffering that you could teach your younger grandchildren:
Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows my sorrow.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Glory hallelujah.
Suffering remains a mystery but it is never without a purpose. The purpose of suffering is not to make us bitter but to make us better.
This article is adapted from a forthcoming book by Grandly founder, Mike Shaughnessy, entitled: A Spirituality for Aging.