Pain is a wonderful reminder of our vulnerability. It exposes just how needy we are. It grips us with a deep desire for both how things were in a day prior, and births from somewhere within a hope that one day we will find relief. It causes us a brokenness in us where others can finally see the person who cries, who suffers, and who "can't do" the simple, mundane things previously taken for granted. And pain exposes the innate desire of every human who has ever lived: to be happy.
Nobody in their pain is overjoyed. Nobody in their pain is asking for it to intensify. Nobody in their pain is lamenting the day of its cessation. That is not human. We are all in pursuit of the relief of such.
Yet we need pain. Without pain we would suffer tremendous damage to ourselves, without knowing it. Without pain I would not know what damage I am doing to my hand by placing it on the hot iron (and yes, I do know this from personal experience when I was 5 years old). Pain is that voice that speaks all languages of something isn't right, and that if we continue as we are we will be doing greater damage to ourselves. So while pain is undesirable, the purpose of it is magnificent.
This life is preparing us. We don't consider it often, but the woes of this life serve us well. Pain is only a preview to a greater enemy that is knocking on the door of every one of us. For some it comes sooner than what we anticipate, for others it comes seemingly too late, and for the rest it comes at the expected time. Death is that unwelcome knock at the door that all of us have met secondarily, but will one day meet face-to-face. Pain is a reminder of this. So let pain serve its purpose in that regard to remind of the brevity of this life.
Secondly, pain is a reminder of the life that is to come. It is every bit overwhelming to think of not finding relief from pain in this life. Say one suffers a broken bone that never heals and this is compounded with pain by an infection, and one day that same bone is afflicted with cancer that for the duration of life were never to end, one would suffer significantly. And yet no matter the extent of the suffering one experiences in this life it will eventually end. But pain is a reminder that for those who don't know Christ, the reality they face when this life is over is one of unending pain. Indeed there is no hope of freedom from pain in the life to come for those who don't know Christ. And I dare be so bold to say the suffering from this pain is infinitely worse than the suffering anyone experiences now. Be bold to tell people of the reality that faces them apart from Christ.
But reflect often on the coming joys and cessation of pain in the life to come for those of us who are in Christ. We don't think often enough of the life that is to come, which is shocking. We make too much of this brief life. But the life that is to come promises "no more pain." Now that is not all He promises us. The good news of the life to come is that we are at peace with God and have a relationship with Him and He will ever satisfy us. But it is considerable that there is coming a complete freedom from pain. So while we are here we need to let the moments, days, weeks, months, and years of our pain, in its many forms, remind us of the reality we will one day step into where these things are no more. And if the sufferings we endure now are at least in part but a preview of the joy that we are to experience in the life to come, we need to embrace it with great hope.
"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." - Romans 8:18
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