None of us plans for the phone call that changes everything.
Sometimes it is a diagnosis. Sometimes it is the sudden loss of someone we love. In the business world, it often may be redundancy, financial collapse, a failed venture, or the quiet realization that the future we painstakingly built is no longer possible.
Sooner or later, every one of us experiences a season when life turns upside down.
Looking back over more than 70 years, I’ve come to believe something my younger self never would have accepted: our hardest seasons can become our greatest teachers.
I didn’t learn that from a business textbook or a management seminar. I learned it the hard way.
At 10 years old, I was diagnosed with cancer—my childhood became a blur of hospitals, treatments, and surgeries. At 11, while still recovering, my mother died suddenly and unexpectedly.
As a child, I couldn’t make sense of either experience. I didn’t have the maturity to ask what God might be teaching me. I wasn’t thinking about resilience, character, or purpose. I just wanted life to return to normal.
It never did.
Suffering Doesn’t Have to Define Us
Looking back now, I can see that those childhood experiences changed the direction of my life. But they did not have to define it.
That distinction matters deeply—especially for leaders. We cannot always choose what happens to our health, our careers, our businesses, or our organizations. We can, however, gradually learn to choose what we do with what happens to us.
Years later, I began reading Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount with fresh eyes. I discovered He wasn’t offering easy answers or quick performance fixes. He was describing a radically different way of living—one that seems almost upside down compared to modern corporate culture.
Jesus begins:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for there is the kingdom of heaven.”
Then: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
And: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
These are not necessarily the traits our culture normally celebrates. Society often rewards unshakeable confidence, fierce independence, outward achievement, and dominant strength.
Jesus begins somewhere else: with humility, dependence, and the courage to admit we don’t have all the answers.
Hard seasons are powerful teachers because they strip away some of our illusions of control. In leadership, it is easy to confuse authority with control. Crisis dismantles that illusion. It teaches us that vulnerability is not failure and that needing others is not weakness. Sometimes, it opens our hearts to a depth of compassion we might never otherwise discover.
The Question That Changes Your Horizon
For a long time in my own journey, one question felt entirely natural: “Why is this happening to me?”
This is a very human question. When life or work hurts, we demand an explanation. When our plans collapse, we want to know why. However, eventually, another question began to emerge: “Who might I become because of this?”
Those two questions take us in very different directions. One looks backward, searching for an explanation; the other looks forward, searching for possibility.
This is not about adopting shallow positivity or telling someone in crisis to “look on the bright side”—that can be cruel. Grief needs space, and pain needs acknowledgment. I would never tell an 11-year-old who lost their mother that the loss was simply a “lesson”.
It was loss, grief, and it hurt.
However, over time, a shift becomes possible. We can begin asking what we might do with the life—and the leadership—that remains.
From “Why Me?” to Servant Leadership
As I grew older and stepped into roles as a teacher, principal, and mentor, I began noticing the silent burdens carried by people around me. I realized I wasn’t the only one carrying pain.
Slowly, the focus shifted from my own circumstances toward others. Years later, I recognized this change in Jesus’ words: “You are the light of the world.”
He didn’t say, “You are the light of the world once your own life is perfectly sorted out.” He invited us to let our light shine right where we are.
Our seasons of darkness equip us to recognize someone else’s darkness.
- The leader who has known failure may become a safer refuge for a struggling team member.
- The professional who has navigated redundancy may bring genuine empathy to someone facing career uncertainty.
- The person who has received grace may discover the privilege of offering it to others.
This is where the Sermon on the Mount directly challenges modern leadership:
| The World Says | Jesus Says |
| Look out for yourself first. | Be merciful. |
| Make sure people notice your success. | Give without needing applause. |
| Win the argument at all costs. | Be a peacemaker. |
| Protect your title and reputation. | Let your character speak for itself. |
This is servant leadership at its deepest level. It isn’t primarily about position, title, or holding power, but about becoming the kind of person whose presence elevates and heals others.
We Don’t Choose the Storm – We Choose the Foundation
Near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus shares the story of two builders. One builds on rock, the other on sand. Then the storm comes.
Notice that the storm comes to both. Faith does not guarantee immunity from life’s volatility. The difference is entirely in the foundation.
Jesus says: “Everyone who hears those words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house upon a rock.”
The foundation Jesus describes isn’t simply believing the right things. It is hearing His words and putting them into practice, which has profound implications for leadership.
Our foundation is revealed not when everything is going well, but when the storm arrives.
The storm in our lives could be a difficult diagnosis, a loss, a crisis, a failed venture, a redundancy, or a leadership challenge we never anticipated.
Cancer was a storm. Losing my mother was a storm. Professional setbacks over seven decades were storms. None were welcome. However, each became part of a patient process of shaping my heart.
The goal of life and leadership isn’t to avoid every storm, but to build a foundation strong enough to stand when they arrive.
Looking Back
Today, looking back across a lifetime of service, my headline isn’t the suffering I endured. The headline is: Jesus met me there.
He didn’t remove every obstacle, nor did He hand me a tidy explanation for everything. But I have come to recognize His presence in the middle of it all. I have also discovered that God doesn’t call suffering good, but He brings good from what is broken—turning wounds into compassion, experience into wisdom, and pain into empathy—and that may be one of the most important lessons hardships can teach leaders.
We become better leaders when we allow what we have experienced to enlarge our capacity to understand, encourage and serve others, and not simply because we have suffered.
A Question for Your Current Season
Perhaps you are walking through a difficult season right now. Behind a calm, professional demeanour, you might be carrying quiet fear, grief, disappointment, or exhaustion.
Your immediate question may be: “How do I get through this?” That is a necessary place to start.
But when you are ready, consider asking:
- “What might this season be teaching me about the person I am called to become?”
- “Who might need me because of what I am learning through this?”
Your story, perspective, and willingness to listen may become the very turning point someone else desperately needs. One caring, authentic relationship can change a life. Sometimes, our hardest seasons are the very experiences that prepare us to offer that relationship to others.
Jesus offers something far beyond quick fixes. He offers a foundation, a way of seeing, a way of living, and an enduring reason for hope.
As you navigate your work and life today, pause and reflect: What can I become through this season—and who might I be prepared to help because of it?