Hey Church!
Today’s reflection is on pain. It has been heavy on my mind as of late, so I hope something of my own experience on the subject will engender a timely word of encouragement to some of you who suffer. If this is not written for you, perhaps it is written for your ministry to a friend or neighbor.
We all experience pain in various forms and degrees. For some, it is physical and chronic. For others, it is emotional and temporary. Many suffer the effects of a troubled mind. Spiritually, we embrace discomfort each time the will of the flesh is mortified in subjection to Christ. Loss, grief, despair, sacrifice, disabilities, and disappointments are just a few of the innumerable pains that are part and parcel of the human experience. In the animal kingdom, too, unpleasant sensations serve the purpose of preserving life. Stress signals provoke prey to fight or flight when a predator appears, their resulting injuries teach them how to interpret future encounters, and the rewards of winning the chase strengthen their bodies and fortify their will to hunt another day. This raises the question: is there anything more to the meaning of our pain, as those made in the image of God? Or is it nothing more than a bleak and insignificant reality with no aim whatsoever?
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. – C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
I suppose it is possible, or even likely, that God uses your pain to shout something entirely different to you than He does to me. In fact, the lessons issued from that mysterious, divine megaphone may change from one season of life to another. In my own experience, twenty-one years of chronic pain in my spine, with its accompanying evils and depressions, have consistently confronted me with my own insufficiency in order to train me to encounter life’s predations with a quick self-forgetfulness and claim to the sufficiency of Christ. Practically speaking, that means that while many in this world may be blind to their brokenness, mine is ever before me in such an invasive, relentless way as to be utterly impossible to ignore. The temptations of our enemy, Pride, still accost me, of course, but his path is met with such resistance within my diseased members that he must find other, less conspicuous pathways to my heart (the inflated importance of my own opinions, for example). I know my limits, physically. Now if only I would learn to respect the limits of what I am equipped to carry emotionally and mentally, I might just look back one day and realize that Pain was my closest ally in this good fight of faith. He was the instrument by which the Father broke through my hardened ground and etched the deepest valleys of faith, where wells of wisdom and green pastures of joy are able to thrive unmolested by the lofty ambitions of the flesh.
You who walk in such valleys, ponder and cherish the words of the Apostle Paul, a fellow laborer who suffered immensely for the sake of the gospel.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. (Rom. 8:18-26)
Your brother,
Ryan