Writers In The Storm

“God has given me the gift of pain.” The speaker lived with a chronic debilitating disease as she struggled in a difficult marriage. But she saw the value of her pain-she recognized God had entrusted her with a gift that few, if any, welcome, and most resist. I listened to her story about twenty years ago, and I’ve pulled that memory out to ponder many times as I’ve gone through my own experiences with pain. Can I really view pain as a gift?

We all have our tragedy stories. None of us are exempt from the pain of living in a fallen world. Yet, we want the storybook ending, the Cinderella ballroom experience of rising above our difficult circumstances. And if you’re like me, you’d like to throw in the fairy godmother dust of immediate relief and changed circumstances. You know, the snap-of-the-finger deliverances.

But how would our lives be different if we viewed pain as a gift-an invitation for the most intimate relationship with our majestic God? If we recognized that His gift, wrapped in suffering, was a treasured glimpse into His mysteries, His glory, His grace? A divine appointment. The difficulties become easier when we see through His eyes-that we are privileged recipients of the promise of His presence. Suffering beckons us to embrace Him a little tighter… to cling to Him… to know Him.

Oswald Chambers said, “If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace; or even if He has made it bitter, drink it in communion with Him. If the providential will of God means a hard and difficult time for you, go through it.” Go through it. Go through it with Him.

Pain is our gateway to an intimate walk with a holy God (who has every reason to throw us out of His presence). To discover a life of wonder as we commune with Him. To even welcome the difficulties as well as the times of ease. I’m not there yet. When difficulties shake my life, I’m hiding, not welcoming. Give me the cleft of the rock. Where can I find His pinions? Does anyone know the way to His bulwarks? That’s where you’ll find me when pain hits. And I’m certainly not singing for joy. I’m usually begging for His help, whining for His intervention, and crying for relief. 

And He hears. He assures us that our tears are precious to Him. He keeps them in His bottle. (Wonder what He plans to do with our flask of sorrows.) The tears represent moments of our lives that only He can explain, when we presented before Him the surrender of our hearts, the sacrifice of our souls, in response to His gift of pain. Only He knows the worth of the gift, and only He knows the value of our offerings.

I don’t feel well today. I have a groggy head, a snuffy nose, and a throat that burns. When I feel like this, it’s difficult to remember what healthy feels like. I tend to normalize my affliction. In many ways, this coping mechanism is a blessing. It allows me the grace to accept loss and find a path on which to continue. The alternative is a system-wide shut down, such as when I had bronchitis, or when I ate the bad sandwich and simply could not function.

But pain can also seep into the cracks. I can absorb it in a way that it becomes part of my flesh. Too much pain comes from preventable sources. I want to give bitterness no ground to root. And unless the source of the pain is necessarily permanent, what’s the point? Why continue to suffer?

I need to sit before my Lord and take stock. If I am in sin, then I need to ask Him for forgiveness and the strength to sin no more. If I am yielding to the dark side of another, then I need to forgive, and ask for the strength to not give another such power. If I am in a perilous situation, with an outcome yet to be determined, then I need to keep close to my Lord, so that I will know when he nudges be forward.

In a day or two, I will feel better, and I will have forgotten what it felt like to be sick. I want to live right with God, taking daily walks in His presence, seeing His blessed face from my bended knee. May this feeling be what I internalize, normalize, and never, ever forget.

One advantage of being a football fan is that I get plenty of opportunities to partake of the wisdom of the sports analysts. Defensive schemes that don’t work and how to incorporate dink-and-dunk into the offensive plan. The nickel, three-four, four-three, crossing routes, finding the seam-the-crease-or-whatever discussions. But a few Sundays ago, when the Cowboys’ performance was dismal at best, I heard a nugget from Darryl “Moose” Johnston… probably borrowed from a preacher. “Adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals character.”

Some of us-the character-builder advocates-live our lives with the attitude that the harder life is, the better off we’ll be. The folks who herald this philosophy (cranky relatives and difficult bosses) often take it a step further. The harder I make life for everyone else, the better off they’ll be. They’ll thank me in the long run. And some of us adopt the attitude of embracing adversity in an attempt to attach some meaning to our pain.

Moose had it right-adversity reveals character. When things get tough, we find out what we’re made of, and it usually isn’t pretty. The unveiling almost always reveals depravity. Failings. Weak-heartedness and selfish motives. Sin. Less-than-admirable character.

But Moose also had it wrong. Adversity builds character, too. The Bible tells us that trials come to produce endurance. Consider Peter-adversity built, as well as revealed, his character. We see his weakness as he denies Christ, and we witness the new and improved Peter after going through his betrayal of the One he claimed to love. The testing produced an endurance that enabled Peter to become a leader in the early church-to display “the rock” of the profession of faith in Christ to a clueless world. Peter’s former failure launched his deep motivation to rely on Christ-he knew how far he could fall without clinging to Jesus.

When Moose made his sage comment during that first quarter football commentary, he left out some important points that most preachers would’ve emphasized. Hard times reveal our need for God. Sometimes we don’t turn to Him until our options are gone and He’s all that’s left. Difficulties also give God the opportunity to reveal Himself as a faithful Caregiver to His needy children, to woo us into a deeper intimacy with Him, and to give us a glimpse into the mystery of His ways. Adversity allows us to experience the deliverance of our majestic, mighty God.

Ah, the things we learn watching football.

(James 1, 1 Peter 1:6-9).

I have to admit-given the chance, I’ll take the easy way. The path of least resistance. I really don’t like to struggle. Just give me that big red easy button and life is good.

Don’t you ever wonder why God made life so hard? Why does He put us in difficult circumstances or allow us to experience pain? He spoke the world into existence in a matter of days-couldn’t He have devised that kind of system in developing our characters, in planning our lives? He’s obviously able-so why didn’t He?

I know, I know. It’s a mystery. That much I understand. I just haven’t been able to figure out why He chose suffering as a part of His wonderful plan for our lives. (Other than the trite clichés and well-worn platitudes that well-meaning friends offer us when we’re drowning-it builds character, it makes us stronger, it’ll help someone else along the way.)

My friend Sandy buried her husband of thirty-five years last week. My brother-in-law cried over his eighteen-year-old son’s casket last month. Last Monday I celebrated my mom’s seventy-second birthday without her. (I can’t imagine her with wrinkles-she’ll always be forty-three to me.) Each of our goodbyes were wrapped in more pain than any of us wanted to experience, yet God was involved in our heartache. He made the decision for each of our loved ones to return to Him and to be absent from us, knowing His decision would inflict suffering.

And still, He is good, and He intends the pain to work His goodness into our lives.

That’s where I want the easy button. I’d be just as appreciative if He’d deliver “good” into my life another way-probably more so, certainly with less distraction, if I wasn’t struggling with the bandages on my heart. I’m not always satisfied that He offers His grace instead of an easy fix.

His word assures us, though, that suffering is our bond-we’re children of God, fellow-heirs with Christ, and somehow He links sharing in His suffering to the process of glorification with Him. Mystery magnified.

But the story isn’t over. The time of the unveiling of His glory hasn’t arrived yet. When the time is right, He won’t need an easy button to make us understand. We’ll sigh in relief and understanding. We’ll even smile. Until that day, we trust. And we wait for our faithful Creator to do what is right.

(Romans 8:16-39; 1 Peter 4:12-19).