Sometime when frustrated you’ll hear someone say ‘that’s a pain’. Then there are those times when life is genuinely painful.
When tragedy, trouble and trauma come our way they cause lots of grief. Some of you reading this will understand when I say that sometimes the pain is so great that it feels like its tearing your heart in two.
Often there is no answer to the pain. No solution. No easy answer. No smart words that can lessen its impact.
Then there is the loneliness that goes with pain. The feeling that no-one else understands (and they may not) and no-one really knows what we are going through, even though people say ‘I understand’.
But there is One who does understand, One who knows and One who really cares. God experienced the pain of giving up his Son Jesus (John 3:16). Jesus himself experienced the pain of our sins heaped upon him (2 Corinthians 5:21). He cried out in anguish in the garden ‘if possible let this pass from me’ (Mark 14:35-37) and in the anguish of becoming sin for us ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mark 15:33-35).
There is no pain that we go through that God does not understand. There is no pain we go through that God does not care about. In times of pain we need an anchor for our soul. Knowing He understands, knowing he cares and knowing that in the end, even if not in this life, he will make all things right is worth hanging on to. And sometimes faith is just hanging on despite the pain.