Thank God for Pain

Merry Christmas, everybody.  I hope this season is full of joy and peace for you.  It is truly a season of awe and wonder, as we remember the inconceivable goodness and condescension of our God.  The self-existent omnipotent potentate of time was “made flesh and tabernacled among us” to seek and save the lost.  How that should fill our hearts with joy!

As we celebrate, however, there is an undeniable inconvenient truth that we cannot escape – the joy of the holidays is tempered with pain.  All the light of the festivities and traditions can take a dark turn when somebody special is missing.  This year has been a tough year.  My family said goodbye to the author and lover of our home earlier this year when my beautiful wife was laid to rest.  Approaching the first advent season without her is hard.  It’s not the same filling stockings when the one who bought and filled them isn’t here – when the “Mommy” stocking stays in the dark storage bin instead of hanging by the fireplace.  Decorating the tree is somewhat empty when the one who bought all the ornaments is gone.  Decking the halls to joyful Christmas tunes is sad without the one who loved Christmas so much she started singing “Joy to the World” in July.  Making a fire and sipping warm tea by the Christmas tree lights just isn’t the same by yourself.  This pity party could go on and on, but I have a new suggestion for myself and anybody else who is in pain this Christmas – thank God for it.

Now, if I were you, and you were writing this piece, I would stop reading right there.  I am a busy single parent, and I don’t have time to waste reading thoughtless trite superficial mindless pleasantries that sound pious and lack any substance whatsoever.  We live real life.  We feel real pain, and it doesn’t do us a bit of good to walk around blindly pretending to be fine and thankful for that which wrings our heart out at night.  The effects of sin in this world are hideous, and the work of the enemy is terrible.  In no way would I suggest we be thankful for that, it is deplorable.  No, that is not what I am talking about, it is not what I desire, and if I haven’t lost you yet, I hope you can hang on for this.

We avoid pain at all costs, but I would like to consider together for a moment the tremendous symbolic value of pain.  Now it is true that you must be alive to feel pain, and the perception of pain is a wonderfully designed system to give us feedback.  It is also true that when our nerves die and we feel no pain (whether physical or spiritual) we are also dying. In a very concrete sense, the perception of pain tells us we are alive and helps to keep us alive -- that is good.  However, that is not the symbolic value of pain to which I am referring.  No, I would suggest that the very fact that pain and loss exist are reasons to celebrate – not that we relish pain and loss – not at all, but rather that we are free.

Patrick Henry is famous for his courageous cry of the human heart in 1775, “Give me liberty or give me death”.  His plea has encapsulated and in many ways promulgated the core value that the United States was founded on and is famous for – freedom.  What does it mean to be free and what does that have to do with pain?    

Let’s take a step back for a minute.  If you or I were to design the cosmos, we would want to design it perfectly.  Now, your perfect and my perfect would probably look different as there are infinite opportunities for variation, but it would function perfectly the way we designed it, and doubtless that would not include pain.  Now, if it were a simple automation, and if we were infinitely powerful, then we could exist with our machine forever.  The system would function according to its perfect design, and we would go on in perfection forever.  We could design a flying Tesla and ride it all over the universe.  Yay! Simple….but lonely.

However, if we were to add intelligence and love into our equation, then we would have a very different situation.  If our creation had the luxury of intelligence, then it would have the obligation of choice.  And if our version of perfection included love, then we would have to honor that choice.  Suddenly, our simple perfect eternity is much more complex.  If our creation was intelligent, free, and loved, then could it make a wrong choice?

Okay, back to reality…the Bible tells us that Adam and Eve were created free and perfect in the Garden of Eden.  God gave them the ability to choose, and they made a bad choice.  There it is!!  That is why we should be celebrating our pain this Christmas!  We take for granted the love and freedom that are the undergirding of our existence, but it did not have to be that way.  Have you ever considered that we could truly live in a Universal Autocracy mindlessly serving Evil Dictator forever?  Even worse, we could have been engineered to be content with that existence, without ever questioning why it was that way.  Ignorantly pursuing the mundane prescription into oblivion.  No option to be good or bad, just existent.  That would be an eternal Hell, and it could have happened.

But we are the objects of grace, and thank God it didn’t!  No…that is not the nature of our God.  Look at the evidence of how much He loves us.  First, we can rebel.  This is evident all over the earth.  When you hear the bad news coming over the line, see in it the handwriting of righteousness – God gave us freedom to make bad decisions because He loves us.  When you hear a theory that says life came from spontaneous generation, think of the wisdom and love of a Creator who has set His creation free to think, and believe deception if they so choose.  When you meet somebody who has rejected a God who has allowed bad things to happen, assure them that a God who would not allow bad things to happen would be so much more worthy of rejection (even though it would be impossible). 

No, my friends, as I sit here on this Christmas couch alone by the fire and lights, we have a reason to rejoice in our tears.  The truth of Christmas is that in infinite love and wisdom the eternally loving God we serve has allowed for sin and pain.  The earth bears the scourge of the curse, and we all pay a price for it, but love could have it no other way.  The Lamb of God we worship in the manger was slain “from the foundation of the world” because He would rather die than take away our freedom. God knew that rebellion would come, and in infinite love He has allowed it.  Rather than dictatorial force, He has shown that His omnipotence is made perfect in weakness, and that the attractive magnetism of that Baby born in a manger will in time subdue all rebellion, and sin will never arise again.  While we feel the pain of freedom abused, we can look forward to a day soon when He will, “wipe every tear from their eyes” because the “old order of things has passed away”. 

If you are in pain this Christmas, I have one wish – please don’t reject God because of it.  As my late wife Shallena has said, “It makes no sense to reject God in our pain when we need Him the most”.  He suffers the pain with us – real, life-wrenching pain – and He points us forward to when the curse is gone, and these tears will be wiped away.  He weeps with us, He rejoices over us, He is coming soon to save us once and for all, when love will forever triumph.  “Even so, come [again!], Lord Jesus!” Rev. 22:20.

Merry Christmas, Friends.