Pain

Pain adds more shame. Sometimes, the strength of my pain makes me feel--less. Shamed. Dishonoring to God. Failing.

Yet, pain at the right things shows a heart more tuned to God’s. Who sees what should have been and mourns at the discrepancy. Pain is the empty, gaping vastness of nothingness so tangible it cuts between the rainbow, where the earth does not meet the colors-to-be that reach down.

A heart of flesh cries; a heart of stone will just push through, shout it makes me stronger, cuts a stuff upper lip.

A heart of flesh bleeds; alas, and did my Savior bleed.

Joy can only come from a heart that is alive--alive to pain and death, grief and sorrow, joy and delight.

Pain, in this broken world, is right. It is a silver trumpet call ringing out through the mist that not all is right.

Pain is right in the sense that we are finite and dependent.

From Genesis to Psalms to the apostle Paul to the wizened apostle on lonesome Patmos exile in Revelation, finitude and dependence are recognized as blessings.

But with finitude comes the searing pain of standing by, helpless. Powerless. Nor is the pain staunched when God seems silent and the waves of Satan’s chaos seems unchecked. But against tiny grains of sand--the mighty weight of raving water will not breach. The Lord is working; and is placing each grain of sand in place.

Pain leads to dependence. Oh, what a galling sweet, sweet gift: “For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).

Pain is invited by our Lord.

He bends his ears, he who could hear only the praises of angels wanted to hear your pain, anger, grief, sorrow. So much so he became flesh, took on pain. He took pain in himself, opened his pristine heart to the horrors of pain that you know so well.

He sought out the demon-possessed man, crossing the sea just for him. He crossed heaven to earth to hear you. “In all their affliction he [YHWH] was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old” (Isaiah 63:9).

He invites our pain. He does not shame.

Today, I do not take your hand and point to the slim rays of dawn still hidden by the dark clouds--albeit there, just barely.

Today, we sit together in pain, whatever yours may be: of grief, loss, dreams, lost future, anniversaries, one so recent the anger and denial chokes, one so constant that it has become the steady rain of despair, tragic, long-expected and slow, aging, depression, cancer, cutting, eating disorder, shame…… We sit, together.

It is not to let Satan gain another hand: do not let it be shame.

Our heart is of flesh--we beat in pain when all is not right.

We herald a clarion silver call--all is not right in pain.

Rooted in dependence--deeper will drill the roots, even if it seems all is sucking dry in pain.

Invited into our God--not only to be heard, but by the pain of Jesus, taken into the very Godhead by the Spirit in Jesus before the Father. Pain is not our master, but the God who knows, and is greater, than the pain.