Transformation of Pain

When I begin to study deeply into Scripture, or when I am alone for extended periods of time at home, lost in a book or in the woods of God's Creation - my mind always drifts back to pondering pain and suffering.
Which in turn, begin to surface in my writings once again.

Maybe tonight it is because one of my childhood heroes has passed like a few others have this summer.
Maybe it is because of my history with death and suicides.
Maybe I may have a biochemical overdose of melancholy and sadness in my psyche, my dissection of the problem of pain is never far from my thoughts.

Pain is something I know well.
Suffering is something that I have been acquainted with; when the two return, as they do in all individual lives from time to time, it isn't like an enemy coming to do battle. I picture it more as a wrestling match or a struggle.

Personally, I believe that there is no more fundamental experience than pain.

We enter the world in pain, causing pain, some receiving more than their share of pain in the process and all too often, we leave the world the same way.

The pain and suffering of Christians has long been debated; yet, academic exercises concerning the fallenness of the world and the mysteries of God with relationship to His creatures, will never end the suffering.
And even if we had an explanation for the unexplained suffering of the world, it would not satisfy because the suffering has not ended.

Over the years in ministry and in struggling with pain, suffering and the possibility of death when I had cancer, I can honestly say that seeing children suffer is the worst to witness.



Once I met a 4-year old who was born with bone cancer and who had never known a day without pain.
I couldn't explain the situation or even begin to know God's plan in that situation; but I did see that child smile. And laugh. And bring joy to others.
It made me thankful for the leaps in progress humanity has made, with the revelation of God, in discovering new drugs, techniques and methods for cancer - more so for the children who suffer than the adults; including myself.

It also reminds me that not all things can be explained.

A long time ago, a wonderful Christian named John Donne ministered in one of the most horrific times in the history of England; he experienced three plagues hit London. The last of these killed 1/3 of all the people.
Donne himself was believed to have contracted the plague during the last of these tragic times. 

It was at that time, through pen and paper with the gift of God in prose, John Donne penned the following words concerning death during that time.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

There are many unknowns about our suffering.
Yet, we strive for answers and explanations.
Though we may not have the righteousness of Job in our hearts, we do have the desire of Job, which is to know why things happen to us that are beyond our control; especially when those things and events bring pain and suffering into our lives.

During those times we must be reminded that you and I don't live by explanations; we are to live by faith.
Yet, these words ring hollow to a man or woman who is truly hurting.

Amazingly, the places we have designated as 'healing centers' do not help much either; mostly, they are depressing and have an antiseptic feel about them.
Patients do not always feel like human beings; in time they begin to feel like objects.
And ultimately, hospitals and rehabilitation centers breed despair and depression, not hope.

I do not know what other people feel when they are dying, or suffering, or in tremendous pain. I can only relate what I thought and believed during that time.

I never really feared dying; I didn't like the idea of the pain. I didn't want to suffer. I didn't want to have cancer. But I wasn't scared to die.
I was never terrified of being dead; I did, however, become afraid of how my children would react and what would happen to them concerning their relationship with God once I was gone. And I think that's understandable because I wanted them to serve the Lord; my death could have prevented that for a considerable amount of time because of the lack of understanding and light.

At that time and even today, I knew my pain, suffering and impending death was not from God. I was fairly certain, as I still am, that God hated my cancer about as much or more than I did.
He didn't cause the cancer; but I knew He could cause something good to come out of cancer; and He did - only as He could.

I'm now nearly three years cancer-free.
I know not everybody has the same miracle or the same blessing as I received; though I wish they could.
Yet, there is a reason why some suffer and others do not.

You see, not once to Jesus Christ ever turn to a suffering person and say, 'Well, you're suffering and in pain because you deserve it!'

No....just no. 
Instead, Jesus would offer healing to their body and forgiveness to their soul.

And therein lies a golden nugget of truth.

We spend far too much time wondering 'why' or 'why me' or 'why them' when something tragic happens, or painful or an unexpected, or an unfair death.
Not once did I ask 'why me.'
Maybe it was because early on a Catholic friend of mine prayed for me and asked me to consider this → If I wasn't suffering from Cancer, then who would? Who, of all the people I knew, would be better to glorify God through the enduring of this tragedy?

He was right.
Just as only Jesus could have endured His suffering, so too will His children, His Sons and Daughters, endure trials and we will be well-suited and well-equipped for each of them so that He will be glorified in the end.

That was a powerful question and in a round about way, he had given me the answer to Job's questions of suffering unjustly so long ago.
When Job questioned God, he railed against the Lord. 
God, who is full of love and compassion, answered Job in a confusing way, asking where Job was when He had created the universe, pointing to the beauties of His own Creation.
Job is humbled and quiets down before His Lord.

God's message to Job was simply that His answer as God as to 'why' would be well beyond humanity's concepts and ideas.
Yet, as God, and showing His servant the Creation, God was asking if Job would entrust his life to the same Lord who upheld Creation.

My friend's question/statement was the same, and it was just for me.
It was this → Was I going to trust God, or not? Did I really believe all those things about God that I preached about and taught others to believe?

I did believe it and I did and do trust Him.

And if I died tonight, I could not have just cause to complain because God has been so gracious and merciful to me, that I know I have received more than I could ever repay from His blessed hand.
But that's the beauty of serving God; He doesn't ask us to repay Him, only to love Him.


Despair is suffering without meaning. 
God does not and will not place us in despair.
That tells us that God has meaning in suffering, even when we don't know what that meaning is or we cannot understand it.

We believe God is holy, just and true.
We believe rightly.
And because we do, we think the world ought to be just and true; but it is not.
The world is fallen; as such, tragedies happen, people are wrongly injured, and innocents die.

We can only see the negative in suffering; but there is also joy in suffering.
The joy is found in the fact that pain is only temporary, the world is being replaced and suffering, pain and tears will one day cease to exist.

Pain and suffering, for now, while these things cannot be defeated, they can be redeemed.

You see, personally, I have a holy indifference to death; I respect death but I do not fear death because I know it is a foreign intruder in humanity that will one day cease to exist.
As for now, it appears that death severs completely life away from the living.
In reality, death actually opens a door - a door to how life was supposed to have been and experience from the beginning → New, Full, and Eternal.

Until next time, when one for the good guys.