The suffering person Americans don’t seem to understand and chooses to forget …

Everyone needs help at some point — or points — in their lives.

Everyone.

But there seems to be a particular suffering person Americans can’t (or won’t?) understand, and, therefore, chooses to forget: the person whose life has fallen into a hole too deep to get out of without help.

Many people, especially Americans, cannot fathom someone finding themselves in such dire circumstances that they cannot get out of them by just “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.” After all, we’re the people who preach, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” no matter what the problem is.

Not for this suffering person.

There are actually people who have no resources.

Zero.

Not a single penny.

No bootstraps.

Have you tried to do anything when utterly penniless?

That’s when many Americans will talk about these people needing to go to shelters (in many places, shelters are FULL, there are no shelters to go to), get government aid (far more limited than most Americans understand), and talk about how their family and friends have a responsibility to help such people (many families today are so dysfunctional they don’t care, and the loyalty of friends is often limited to “good times”).

Yes, there really are millions of Americans who will never experience relief of their dire circumstances without a miracle or someone stepping up to help them all the way out of their holes. Without one or the other, these people will continue to deteriorate, and some will perish. What often happens to these people is that they may have someone who, for a brief period, will stop by their “hole” and look down upon them; perhaps out of pity they’ll drop a little something for them into their hole. They’ll stop by and share how sad they are about the person being in the hole, and how they’re praying they get out.

But they leave them in the hole.

Some have the resources themselves to get the person out of their holes, but don’t do it. Others don’t have the resources by themselves, but don’t rally any additional support; they rationalize their walking away because they don’t personally have enough resources to execute an extraction.

And so the suffering people remain in their holes.

We have allowed politics, faulty philosophies, and flawed theology to condition us to think there is no set of circumstances so dire an individual cannot overcome them without help, and that no one today experiences the profound suffering of their own version of a “Job experience.” Both happen, but because we don’t believe it, these people are ignored, overlooked, or forgotten.

it’s one thing to find yourself in very difficult circumstances but, with great persistence, you can eventually free yourself of them. It’s another thing to have nothing from which to be able to take on dire circumstances and so cannot make any headway … not without real help.

Fortunately, we don’t discover such people on a regular basis. But chances are, you know of someone who really is this bad off. Are you there for them, or have you left them in their hole?

Scott Free Clinic serves everyone, from the very comfortable to the most suffering, but regardless of who we serve, we’re committed to being a free clinic ministry so that we can remove the barriers of cost and access and just provide people with the help they need. If you would like to partner with us in this mission, you can do so by becoming a Care Partner (learn more about that here) and/or Prayer Partner (learn more about that here).

Scotty