Are you facing suffering today? There are many aspects of human suffering, or pain in the broader sense. There is psychological suffering: depression, anxiety, loneliness, grief from a death, a divorce or a broken friendship. Maybe that’s where you are today. You have emotional pain. Then, there is physical suffering: sickness, injury, declining health, sleep deprivation, even the pain of hunger, thirst and shelter for the impoverished. And the minute we put suffering into these two categories of psychological and physical, we have to understand that one affects the other. The pain of the body affects the mind, and the suffering of the mind affects the body. We all want to avoid suffering don’t we? But isn’t suffering and pain inevitable in this life? And since it is, wouldn’t you like help in how to face suffering when it comes?

That’s where the believers in Smyrna were. They were suffering tribulation and poverty and Jesus sent a letter to help them face it. In the book of Revelation, Jesus told John to write a letter to the church of Smyrna to help them with the suffering they were facing. We can receive Christ’s help when we face suffering.