When it Hurts

Leadership is often painful. If the team loses, the coach gets fired. If the play breaks down, the quarterback gets sacked. If the stock drops, the president of the company is called into the boardroom. Psychologists tell us that we can endure almost anything if we have some understanding of a purpose that might be behind it. I recently ran across this devotional thought from Streams in the Desert II. (December 13)

"Angels are not fitted for sympathy, for they know nothing about human life. In a picture by Domenichino, there is an angel standing by the empty cross, touching with his finger one of the sharp points in the thorn-crown which the Saviour had worn. On his face there is the strangest bewilderment. he is trying to make out the mystery of sorrow. He knows nothing of suffering, for he has never suffered. There is nothing in the angel nature or in the angel life to interpret struggle or pain. the same is measurably true of untried human life. If we would be sons of consolation, our natures must be enriched by experience. We are not naturally gentle to all men. There is a harshness in us that needs to be mellowed. We are apt to be heedless of the feelings of others, to forget how many hearts are sore, and carry heavy burdens. We are not gentle toward sorrow, because our own hearts never have been plowed. The best universities cannot teach us the divine art of sympathy. We must walk in the deep valleys ourselves, and then we can be guides to other souls. We must feel the strain, and carry the burden, and endure the struggle ourselves, and then we can be touched, and can give help to others in life's sore stress and poignant need."

I've been thinking about all of the "guides" I've been blessed with over the years and how many valleys they must have walked through, just so they could lead me through them later.

I am grateful.