Pain and Uncertainty

 

There is pain, and then there is pain, the all consuming type of pain where all you think about….is pain.  In the midst of all consuming pain I’m not looking for how God will use this to shape me or to enable me to minister to others, I’m looking for relief.  I praise Him that He does send relief, if I didn’t believe He would or He could I’d be hard-pressed to want to move on.  So I pray for relief, and in the meantime I grow in grace.  In a sense that’s what grace is, pain relief; it is God taking our pain away and it is God enabling us to endure until He does so.  

 

The enduring is the hard part.  It would be one thing if f the pain wasn’t so all consuming, if we could bury it or ignore it like we do with other things we don’t want to wait for, but all consuming pain isn’t like that, it refuses to be ignored.  We can bear up under it for a little while of our own strength, but only a short while.  In a sense, that’s the blessing, other burdens we aren’t as quick to fully hand over to the Lord because we are able of ourselves to handle them a little longer.  And while handing the burden of our pain over to the Lord is difficult in that it means inviting Him into our pain when we’d rather He just remove it, the weight of the burden forces us to entreat His aid.  

 

But this is what the psalmist says

 

“Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!”  Psalm 27:14 (ESV)

 

The uncertainty is the hard part.  How long will we have to wait for relief?  But even in the uncertainty there is one thing that is certain, God will come, He will provide relief for our pain or take it away.  The key to accessing grace in the meantime is to keep our focus on Him and not on the when or how in terms of the deliverance He will provide.  

 

If you live long enough you will experience pain.  If you live long enough you will experience relief, and if you continue to live you’ll experience pain again.  We are broken people in a broken world; we will continue to break and God will continue to heal us, piece us back together, until we break the next time, and on it will go until finally instead of healing our broken lives here He just takes us to Heaven and gives us a brand new body in a brand new place where nothing or no one ever breaks.  

 

Pain can be all consuming but it’s not the only thing that’s all consuming.  God’s love for you and for me is all consuming as well.  The vastness of God’s love is nice theology when life is going smoothly; but when life is hard and when pain is all consuming, we don’t just believe in His love  we depend on it.    

 

If you are in pain tonight my prayer for you is for relief.  I know what it’s like to be in pain, and that’s certainly what I’d want you to pray for me.  But that’s not all I pray.  I pray that God would consume you with His love, in an even greater measure than your pain has; I pray that your steadfast faith and hope in His grace is so certain it mocks the uncertainties life brings.  

 

And I pray that when He takes the pain away, the all consuming knowledge of His love and His perfect provision for us, remains.

 

God never wastes a pain.

“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.  O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!”  Psalm 30:11-12 (ESV)