“Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” (Jer 9:1 AV)
Unlike yesterday’s passage, in this verse, Jeremiah is lamenting the inability to feel. He has mourned the condition of his people to the point there are no tears left. He is all cried out. Now, he laments that he is emotionally burned out. Yet, he wants to feel. And that is the point. We may be emotionally burned out because of the severity of another’s situation, but that is no excuse for losing the desire to feel deeply again. Jeremiah is obviously a very emotional prophet. He finds empathy an easy attribute. He can internalize the suffering of others. He can see what they are going through. He knows what lies ahead. And it easily disturbs him. What he did not do was allow what he saw and knew to be a certain future to keep him from the desire to have feelings about it. Jeremiah wants the situation to bother him. He wants to be brought to continual tears over the sad condition of his people. He doesn’t want to stop feeling. His solution is to escape to a cabin in the woods so that he might temporarily recover from the scene before him. What we want to consider is the desire to empathize when we have been drained of all ability to do so.
I don’t know how Oncologists survive their
practice. They deal with patients all
day long who are often facing end-of-life decisions. Day in and day out they have to talk with
patients who do not have a good prognosis.
It must be a challenge to remain engaged with one’s patients when one
knows the prognosis is not good. It
reminds me of my days as a Chaplain.
Every month I worked the overnight shift a few days here and there. There were all sorts of patients in all sorts
of conditions. But the hardest floor to
work on was the PCC floor. These
patients were suffering from a terminal condition and the only medical care
given was that which made the patient comfortable. There was no hope to be given. This floor was necessary to visit, but for
some, it wasn’t their favorite. Sort of
like a Mortician. After a while, dealing
with countless people who have lost someone very close to them, the challenge
is to be compassionate and empathize with each individual as though they are
the first. The key is above. There must be a desire to feel even if it is
a struggle.
Each individual deserves compassion and empathy. Constant interaction with those who are suffering, especially if their suffering is self-inflicted, can produce a calloused heart. It can produce depletion of one’s emotional reserves. There is a whole science behind it. Years ago, I suffered an emotional crisis moment. Many events all converged to drain me emotionally to the point of emptiness. I was all used up. There was nothing left. Then the LORD led me to read several books on my situation. A couple of them explained what the body goes through when we experience extreme emotions for an extended period of time. These resources sure helped. The helped me to realize what I was experiencing was normal and not to overreact to my situation. The key was to manage emotional situations and learn to feel again. The desire to empathize cannot be lost even though the ability to do so may be temporarily strained. Just because one cannot feel the situation of another does not mean he shouldn’t desire to do so. This is where Jeremiah finds himself. He has emotionally burned out, but he knew enough that desiring to empathize remained. Unless we can desire to empathize with the situations of others even though we may not be able to at the moment, is the saving grace for future ministry. Never, ever get to the point where you do not even desire to be bothered by another person’s situation.
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