Suffering is strange. It comes upon us seeming to halt our private worlds while the world around continues to turn. Someone is making memories at Disney while another’s loved one dies. A young couple makes vows of faithfulness even as another couple reels from unfaithfulness. Baby showers happen while a would-be mother showers her pillow nightly in tears.

Auden

Poet W.H. Auden captures this strange reality of suffering well in his poem “Musee de Beaux Arts.”

“About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there must always be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:….

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get and sailed calmly on.”

The poem pops for me when I imagine Auden in the famous art museum (which inspired many poets to write similarly titled poems over the years) looking at classic paintings. He stops in front of Brueghel’s famous painting of the fall of Icarus, the man with waxen wings who, in his hubris, flew too close to the sun and fell. He notices the casual nonchalance of the onlookers in the painting. Looking away from Icarus’s suffering so to shield themselves from the uncomfortable reality, they continued unmoved into the normal course of their days. Moved by their lack of motion, he pens his poem exploring human suffering. Auden’s poem, in turn, moves me because it so accurately captures part of the sting of suffering: people who look away from it.

Suffering

Every time there is a natural disaster like Hurricane Helene or an act of terror (yet another school shooting or mass killing), the spotlight moves towards the suffering. Our newsfeeds are inundated, but the news only stays there for about as long as the human heart can bear to stare at pain and calamity– which is not very long. In a few weeks, we grow weary with compassion fatigue or the worries, concerns, and responsibilities of our own lives take reclaim center stage. We look away from suffering even if the suffering has not stopped. The finite, fallen human heart can only handle so much suffering.

Were we the ploughman in the painting, we would likely have turned away from the splash of Icarus’s suffering, especially since it was self-inflicted. Sure, a son just feel from the sky, but fields need ploughing and the family needs food. The boat which sailed away from the fallen sufferer likely had delivery deadlines and limited supplies on board.

While few people know the poem, most people understand its sentiment. In addition to or sometimes worse than the actual sources of our suffering is the response (or lack thereof) of those around us. Suffering tends to isolate us, leaving us with a second sting.

Yes, both Auden and the Old Masters were partially right about suffering.

The Savior Who Sees

If I could step into my imaginary picture of Auden standing before the painting writing his poem, I would love to introduce him to the Suffering Savior, to the One who never turns away from the suffering of his children, even when it is self-inflicted.

I would tell him that he articulates the problem better than most people I’ve ever read, but that the solution is found in the Savior. While Icarus sought to climb to the heights, the Second Person of the Trinity descended (Ephesians 4: 9–10). While the ploughman and shipman turned away from suffering, Christ stepped towards it in the incarnation (Philippians 2: 5–8). Not only did he know the searing pain of human suffering, he chose to willingly bear up under the unjust suffering which was our just penalty. He removed the sting of death through his resurrection.

He is afflicted in all our affliction (Isaiah 63:9). Long before Christ’s incarnation, David declared that God was close to the brokenhearted and saved the crushed in Spirit (Psalm 34: 18). David had no idea that to enable such a reality, God would take on flesh and become the brokenhearted one who was crushed for our healing (Isaiah 53: 4–5).

The Old Masters may have been right about the sting of suffering and the human response to turn away from it. But the Good Master transforms our suffering. He never turns away from our suffering with indifference. He invites us to draw near to his throne, which is a throne of grace, to receive mercy and find help in time of need (Hebrews 4: 14–16).

His presence and his gospel are so powerful that they change us into people who, like their Master, learn to move towards the splashes of suffering rather than look away. After all, we, too, fell like Icarus, but we were lifted by the One who carried the Cross so he might carry us.