Pain.
What comes to mind when you hear that word? Kittens and puppies frolicking in fields of daisies under a warm summer sun? Or multi-color pinwheels spinning in a gentle breeze, to the sounds of little children’s laughter? Or an ice cream sundae with hot fudge flowing down over mint chip ice cream, topped with whipped cream and a cherry?
I’m guessing those weren’t your first thoughts. Instead, you may have remembered burning your finger on a hot stove, enduring a toothache until the dentist could work you in (and work your tooth out), breaking your arm during recess, or being crushed under the enduring agony of a migraine headache or, even worse, of cancer eating at one of your bones.
And those are just the physical pains we suffer – added to those hurts are the emotional pains that come from severe disappointments, failures at work, and broken relationships you thought would last a lifetime. There’s the loss of a loved one to death; there’s the pain of guilt and shame before God and others for things you have done.
Now that I’ve thoroughly depressed you, you’re probably wishing I would talk more about those happy kittens and puppies again, or at least tell you why I’m talking about pain. Okay, so here goes . . . I’m talking about pain because, well, I’m not feeling any right now. Let me explain: just a few days ago I had corrective surgery on my left foot, the one whose recurrent ulcers have periodically returned me to a wheelchair. The foot doctor sliced off the ends of a couple bones that were abnormally bulging from the foot and were the cause of the ulcers. The surgery lasted a couple hours, and when I woke up, my foot was well-wrapped in bandages. I felt rested and comfortable.
Because of the bones being “resected” (the medical term, though I prefer the more graphic term, “sliced and diced”), the doctor prescribed pain killer opioid pills to help reduce what would certainly be severe pain. Not wanting to take an opioid unless I absolutely needed it, I decided to wait to see how bad the pain would get before taking any medication for it – even though everyone recommended starting the medication before the pain started.
So I waited for the pain to begin, and waited, and waited. It’s now been over four days since the surgery, and I’m still waiting; but there’s been no pain at all. When they called me from the podiatrist’s office to ask my pain level, I told them, “Zero.” So what do I make of it? And what do I think about pain – since I have felt it in other situations before, and expect to feel it in the future?
Pain is a normal expectation of life in this world. Only in the new heavens and new earth are we promised freedom from pain – “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). Until then, pain is part and parcel of our human nature. It is, literally, hard-wired in; there are 45 miles of nerves running through our body. To damage or activate most of them is to cause us physical pain.
Pain is not something we want to feel, and that is good; that’s why it hurts. The purpose of pain is to show us that something is wrong, and to move us to do something to correct the problem. We feel heat from a stove to keep us from severely burning our hand; we feel pain when we cut our arm, and apply first aid to stop potentially life-threatening bleeding; our tooth hurts, and we seek dental help to treat an abscess that could cause severe bone damage and even a heart attack; we feel chest pains and are motivated to seek medical treatment that may save our life.
That’s why we sometimes seek things that cause us pain in the short term, to benefit us in the long term. That’s the philosophy of physical exercise, which pushes us to to stress our bodies for the sake of strengthening them; the physical trainer’s mantra is “No pain, no gain!” Some discomfort now leads to better strength and health over the long run.
So how do we deal with the reality of pain? The following approaches come to mind:
We can understand it. This means we recognize its benefits, and seek to find the reason for any pain we are feeling. We can accept its role in protecting us from danger and motivating us to avoid or correct the source of our pain.
We can treat it. Because pain hurts, we don’t like to feel it. Which means we can try to reduce or eliminate our pain, as long as we don’t try to ignore its cause and just mask our pain. This means treating the reason for the pain, and not just the symptom. Taking pain-killers may make our broken leg feel better, but it won’t set bones or protect us from an embolism. Treating the pain is just to get us over the hump until we correct the reason we hurt.
We can endure it. Sometimes, the cause of our pain is a chronic condition which cannot be “corrected,” or even some disorder that is not understood, like fibromyalgia. There is no relief in sight, aside from heavy medication, which has its own set of problems; sometimes, even pain-killers don’t work. Then we face ongoing pain for what may be the rest of our life. How do we endure that? What mental attitudes can help us? What support from others may help us get through each day? How do we live a normal life when there’s no end of pain in sight? Job 30:17 describes such endurance: “The night racks my bones, and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.”
We can accept it as part of our fallen, human condition, which like death, comes to us all. It is not a respecter of persons; if we hurt it’s not a sign that we are more sinful or less important or worse than other people; we do not hurt as a sign of being rejected by God. As Jesus asked when he spoke of some people who had died tragically, “Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?” His answer was, “No” (Luke 13:4). It’s not that sinful actions don’t cause pain (getting shot while robbing a bank can hurt), or that mankind’s sinful nature is not at the root of our mortal and vulnerable condition, but not every pain flows from a particular sin.
We can help relieve it in others. Just because we know pain has its purpose and can even accept it in our own lives, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work to alleviate the pain that others feel. Rescuing people from accidents, visiting the sick in the hospital, donating for relief services, and giving care to loved ones are all ways we show love for our neighbors as commanded by God. The hospice movement is all about relieving the pain in those who are terminally ill, and that is a biblically sound principle: Proverbs 31:6 tells us, “Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress.” When pain no longer serves its warning purpose and just causes unremitting agony, our call is to help relive it where we can.
We can pray about it. This is so important, because God is the One who created our bodies, who knows what is going on, who has the power to relieve the pain and its cause, and will do what is best for us because he loves us so much. Are you in pain? Pray for relief and for correction of the cause (and this applies to both physical and emotional pain). Is someone else hurting? Pray for their relief and healing, even as I am praying for relief for you from whatever pain you have. When my foot first broke down eleven years ago, I had several weeks of burning and pain in the foot; sleeping and concentrating on my work were difficult. Then several church members and leaders got the same idea simultaneously: to gather and pray over me and anoint me with oil as directed in James 5:13-18 (“Is anyone among you suffering . . .”). As they prayed, the pain stopped, and never came back. That prayer, the prayers of so many of you for my recent surgery, and the Lord’s merciful answer to those prayers, are the reason I don’t hurt today. And for that, I am truly grateful to you and to God.
Before closing, there’s one more pain I need to address. It is the pain that is sometimes proclaimed as a modification to the old, “No pain no gain” saying. And that is, “His pain, your gain.” This of course speaks of the pain that Jesus endured for our sake; without him suffering and dying as he did, we would have no forgiveness of sins, no resurrection, no eternal life in which pain and death are no more. No pain for him would have meant no gain for us. As the old hymn proclaims, “Died he for me, who caused his pain . . .” (from And Can it Be by Charles Wesley).
His pain was no mere discomfort; it was pure agony, physically from the torture, mentally from the public shame and apparent defeat, and spiritually from taking on our sins and feeling the Father’s abandonment (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46, and Psalm 22:1). His suffering was foretold by Isaiah 53, and fulfilled in the Gospels. But thanks be to God, its effects will endure long after our greatest pains have vanished forever.
And for that reason, we should all feel better. Even better than frolicking kittens and puppies . . .
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.
Read: Psalm 22, Isaiah 53:1-12, James 5:7-18
