Don't Ignore Hurtful Stories

I have a friend who is HIV positive. After getting to know him over the past year, I finally heard him tell the story of how he contracted HIV from his father. The pain and tragedy revealed in his confession caught me by surprise. For the past year, I have talked and laughed with him while never realizing the true depths of sorrow and anguish which have defined a large portion of his life.

My friend's father got him started shooting heroin with him. Much later, my friend learned that his father was HIV positive. Upon learning this, my friend had himself tested and found out that he, too, was positive. Evidently, his father had known of his own infection for over a year but had kept it secret. With full knowledge of what he was doing, he continued to put people around him at risk, including his own son.

What lessons can I glean from my friend's story? The obvious one, of course, is that parents have a responsibility to lead their kids in healthy, positive directions. But this lesson is the easy one to see in this situation.

A different lesson is that there are many, many people in this world who are carrying around a truckload of pain. We are surrounded everyday by friends, neighbors, co-workers, and strangers simply passing by. I imagine that each one has some story to share which would bring tears to our eyes and pain to our hearts. These folks need us to listen with compassion, reach out to them with understanding, and touch them with the power of love.

I get so very tired of hearing preachers and other "gurus" telling us to ignore the painful and bad things in life and only "focus on the healthy and positive." If we do this, then we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to hear the hurts of others. As people of faith, our job is not to ignore the suffering of the world. Our job is to see it, listen to it, try to understand it, and join with the power of God in trying to transform it.