C. S. Lewis once said, writing of God's will, that the reason people did not want to do God's will, was that they were afraid it would hurt.
I recently have understood this so much more than I wanted to. God's will can carry with it great amounts of discomfort. If you really do God's will, there may well be pain associated with it.
Sometimes the worst pain of all is not physical agony but the emotional affliction. I will never know how much Jesus suffered, in all that he went through. But I feel like I have a taste of the rejection that he felt.
I have held people's babies in my arms, have care for them and cried for them. I've waited long hours in waiting rooms. I've traveled far across town to pray for sick people, in the early hours of the morning, to offer them help and comfort. I have sat and listened to people, felt their sorrow and cried for (and with) them. I have poured my heart, my time, my energy, and my soul, into people's lives. I have shared my home, my food, my finances, and my time. I have left my home to give a helping hand, and heard my family say "please don't go." I've traveled a far distance, away from family and long-time friends and lost those relationships. I have felt the sting of watching my family experience great pain because of how people treated me, and them.
I know that I fall short, very short, of who Jesus was, and who He wants me to be. I would never compare myself to Him or my pain with His. But in all these situations I have realized that I have connected with him. I understand more than ever what he must of felt to have those who He had eaten with, who said they loved Him, who worked beside Him, who ask for so much from Him, then... at His time of distress, reject Him. The time He needed them most they were nowhere to be found.
Maybe in some way I have experienced what Paul talked about when he said:
"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings..." Phil.3:10 I hope that I will experience the power of His resurrection, not only at the resurrection, but that kind of power in my living. But maybe there is more to “fellowshipping” with Christ.
It is funny how that pain seems to be the best tool that God has to speak to us. In pain we seem to pay attention. Pain whacks us hard on the back of our legs (our stability) and we buckle under it's torment. Then suddenly we realize, we are on our knees... right where God wants us to be.
Who wants pain? No one. But it seems to be, as Paul says, part of our experience of Christ. It allows us to fellowship with Him in a more intimate way, to know Him in a way that brings His humanness back to our minds. It reminds us that Christ ‘felt.’ That He is not stranger to our suffering, our discomfort, and our displeasure with a life and a world that seems to be so full of lessons tied to despair, agony, and distress.
Pain’s instruction seems to be so much more burned into our memory, than those moments of happiness. With pain comes the sign that it was part of who we are, the scars. Some we carry for a lifetime, a constant reminder of suffering’s lessons.
So there must be something to this study of pain, this course that God makes us take. Not even Jesus was spared from it’s affliction. God saw that it was necessary even for Him. God seldom removes all pain from life. All social, economic, cultural, maturity divisions are crossed by this curse. No safe place can we hide from it’s clinch. No inoculation from it’s irritation.
Maybe it is true what they say, “No pain, no gain.” What could we really consider a “gain” unless we pay something for it. What in life has value without great price. What lessons do we learn from the mundane, or status quo. What challenges are their in drifting? How do we understand or appreciate the heights of happiness without the valleys of pain?
I would like to pray to God and ask Him to remove all my pain. “Please,” my flesh cries out, “never let me experience it again! ” Yet, there in suffocating heat, that dark canyon of pain, seems to be God’s hand. Not there to pull us up and out of our anguish but to pull us through it. The hurt causes us to reach out and grab hold of God in a way that we never would have.
The scars are medals of honor. Perhaps a reward. They are also a constant tap on our shoulders, a post-it on our forehead, that says “Look what God brought you through. Look what God can do. Look how you have changed and become more like your maker.”
Pressure applied to an ugly, shapeless, useless lump of clay can form a beautiful, wonderfully elegant shaped pot or vase. Then the heat it endures in the kiln makes it useful and allows it to serve it’s purpose.
"What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator. Does a clay pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying, 'Stop, you're doing it wrong!' Does the pot exclaim, 'How clumsy can you be?' - Isa. 45:9
Because of the suffering of Christ, we can never claim that He doesn’t understand our pain. Because of the reality of life, we have to suppose that God allows pain. Because of the change brought out by distress and discomfort in our lives, we must see that God’s uses it.
We hide from pain as much as we can, but when it finds us, we can’t let it waste it’s power or it’s purpose. Don’t let the gift of change, that God often wraps in pain remain unopened. Don’t suffer in vain, BUT when pain comes (and it will) let it drive you to a place with God, an understanding of Him, like you have never had and will never leave.
Wear your medals with pride. Let your scars of courage testify to the world, that you have a God who loves you even in the midst of agony, and your faith in Him, your trust in His ways, your love for Him is so indestructible, that not even pain can turn you from Him.
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