“I will always seek God. Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering. I’ve known for some time what my life’s work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.”
—Kayla Mueller (1988–2015) in a letter to her father on his birthday, 2011.
Kayla Mueller was a twenty-six-year-old Christian human rights activist and aid worker from Arizona who was taken captive by ISIS in 2013 in Aleppo, Syria, after leaving a Doctors Without Borders Hospital. Kayla had been involved in the United States with Food Not Bombs; in India with Tibetan refugees; in Israel with African refugees; and in Turkey assisting Syrian refugees. She died in captivity in 2015 after being a hostage for eighteen months and subjected, by all reports, to torture and sexual abuse.
Many have called her “the best of America” and “the best of the millennials.” Those who knew her and her suffering in captivity, but themselves escaped, all agree. She certainly should be considered a present-day martyr, as she even tried to relieve the suffering of others who were imprisoned with her. She refused to escape with another young Yazidi girl, telling her, “No, because I am American. If I escape with you, they will do everything to find us again.”
God promises to be with us in our suffering. We hear of many who are persecuted who seem to sense God’s presence with them; while others talk of being estranged or abandoned by God. Our world so desperately needs more people like Kayla who have the gift of seeing God in the midst of suffering. As we care for and let those who suffer know they are loved, in time, they may again learn to see God in their neighbor. Then, eventually, they may even see God in themselves again. This indeed is our ministry as spiritual friends to each other.
Most of us do not have the overpowering courage and selfless gift of empathy of Kayla; but there are so many ways to let others who are suffering know they are loved. We can sit and listen. We can help with daily tasks that their suffering keeps them from doing. We can visit. We can call. We can volunteer. We can hug. We can read to them. We can feed the hungry. We can be aware of and reach out to and support those who are sick, lonely, poor, weak, homeless. Let us keep this in our prayers that we will have the awareness of the suffering of others and be enabled to reach out to them as our head and heart leads us.
Joanna . joannaseibert.com