Pain

It’s hard sometimes to know things. To know that someone you love is in trouble. To know that where you are - is still not close enough to help them. It’s hard to know when to say something, when to shut up, when to pray and what to pray. It’s hard to be right there when things are discovered… almost wishing that they had remained covered.

How is it Lord that these things are so painful? Why does pain have to show up all the time? Why can’t things just be found without pain? At least to the observer?

I see pain almost everyday, in everyway… it comes as a knife to the heart in everyone’s life. Through the loss of a child, the use of illegal substances, the abuse of loved ones, there are so many ways pain enters in.

Pain defined by good ol’ Webster is: 1. An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder. 2. Suffering or distress.

Pain comes in, and pain can go out- to those around us. Pain makes us flinch, groan, sigh, sob and run. Yes, run. We have choices when it comes to pain. We can allow it to overcome us in our distress, to make us cave in to the hard choices, or to make us surrender because fighting seems too hard. Or, it can give us the opportunity to show what we are made of, to give us the chance to change in ways that we have always wanted.

Growth comes with pain… you know that is why they call them growing pains, but it doesn’t just happen with the physical body, it also happens with the spiritual growth. You cannot tell me that Paul, David, Peter, John and other heroes of the Bible didn’t experience lots of pain in the midst of God making them into the men that we now call heroes of the faith! Stoning, jail time, beatings, being chased by a mad man- these I believe can be called painful, yet they were the very things that make us remember them, what made them our heroes, it shaped them.

I have found that when things are the most painful, God is most at work. If I hate the circumstance and run away- it usually turns out I’m running from God. If I hate the circumstance and face it head on- that is usually where I find God the closest. Pain is a tool. I know that pain isn’t always from God’s hand, but even if it’s not- He’s still right there beside you in the midst of it.

We all know our own definition of pain, we don’t even have to think about where it comes from, how it makes us feel, what we would like to do with it. But what we all might benefit from is taking the time to decide what we are going to do about it and with the results from it. Are you going to allow it to make you grow- or are you going to cave?

I believe at the end of these thoughts of mine that time and again we are given these choices, because God only wants us to grow better and more like him everyday. I believe that he gives the enemy chances to come after us with pain to push us closer to Jesus’ side. I believe that no matter how much we cry, scream or lash out, our time here on earth is always going to have pain in it. And I believe that Jesus is ALWAYS hoping that we will choose the growth and the fighting for what’s right. I also believe that even though we have the opportunity to grow here on earth- I will keep longing for the day when we shall see His face and this world is no more… and pain will have had its last!

Written 2008